A computer’s desktop is where a user keeps all his important files and it’s what the user looks at most of the time so why not cover it with a wallpaper that suits his/her taste. Not everyone likes same backgrounds for computers/the wallpapers. We are going to share with you 10 great websites for stunning and cool HD Mac Desktop Backgrounds where you can get wallpapers worth keeping as your Mac desktop background. The following sites provide free download of desktop backgrounds for Mac that can be used on your Mavericks andYosemite Mac OS X desktops or laptops.
Apple computers are famous for their display quality and higher resolutions. Their retina HD display enhance the viewing experience of Mac users. Therefore, having higher resolution backgrounds and cool wallpapers will give pleasant experience of your Apple computer.
HD Wallpapers offers a lot of full HD wallpaper with different catalogs and each catalog offers pages of wallpaper so there is a lot for the user to select from for their Mac desktop. Note that all the wallpaper found here have 1920×1080 resolution.
VladStudios is one of my all-time favorite as it offers the kind of wallpaper I would like to have on my desktop. The website is full of wallpaper that has an old look to it and that’s not it there are also hand drawn illustrations available as well which are not overdone and would look good on your desktop.The website also offers different kind of resolutions that max out up to 2k resolution.
Simple Desktops as the titles implies includes a lot of wallpaper that offer a normal design and no something that looks too bizarre or fancy. The website offers a lot of innovative and creative type of wallpaper that are suitable for users with simple touch and also updates fairly regularly with new ones.
Mandolux is a website that is not easy to get through as there are no thumbnails provided for any of the wallpaper that the website has to offer but what’s good about this website is the wallpaper that it offer which are photographed and are wide that will fit perfectly along multiple screens. So if you are a user will a multiple screen desktop then this is where you should be looking for high resolution backgrounds.
DevianArt is one of the biggest websites for Mac wallpapers and offers tons and tons of different genre of wallpaper. User won’t be disappointed as whatever genre of wallpaper they prefer they would surely get some good ones in it, though due to the large catalog that the website offers users might have to do a little digging before they could find the kind of wallpaper that they like.
If you are a photographed wallpaper fan then Interface Lift is the place for you, though it won’t be easy to get a good wallpaper here that easily but, the website offers filter options that user can go through to get their desired wallpapers at high resolutions.
Ultra HD wallpapers site is having great collection of cool desktop background for Mac and Windows 8.1. They have UHD wallpapers with higher resolution 4K (3840×2160 pixels) for Mac and Windows Operating Systems. If you have 4K monitor, this would be a great site to download UHD wallpapers for Mac OS X. There are other size of wallpapers also available including 1080p 1920×1080 and lower resolutions to match your requirement.
The Paper Wall is a website for users with specific category and includes around 30 categories for users to choose from. The website also offers daily featured wallpaper in their featured section so users will have an idea what new wallpapers the website has included daily.
The website mentioned above also have a wide variety of wallpaper that updates regularly with high quality design works and also offers themes designs for various apps and icons as well.
Not the best of websites for Mac Desktop Backgrounds but if you cannot find a wallpaper according to your liking, you can definitely browse this website. It has got a good collection of cool and abstract Mac Desktop Backgrounds.
We hope one of the above website to download UHD and HD Mac desktop backgrounds with high resolution would be very useful and exciting. If you find any more useful websites with great and cool wallpapers for Mac users, feel free to share them in the comments field. We will be happy to add them in the list.
In the last couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of buzz about a new biography of Steve Jobs—called “Being Steve Jobs.”
Now, if you’re thinking: “Wasn’t there already a biography of Steve Jobs?”, you’re absolutely right. Walter Isaacson’s book “Steve Jobs” came out in 2011 and skyrocketed to success. It sold over a million copies, becoming the fastest selling biography ever written. Fascinatingly, it was an authorized biography. Steve Jobs had hand-picked Isaacson to write it, and granted him over 40 interviews, right up until Jobs’s death.
So what’s new in “Being Steve Jobs?” It focuses on the positive sides of Steve Jobs. It paints a much rosier picture of him. It includes interviews with Tim Cook and other Apple executives, reminiscing fondly about the warmer side of Jobs.
As the new book prepares for publication, meanwhile, those Apple executives are going public with their dissatisfaction of Isaacson’sbook.
Tim Cook: “I thought the [Walter] Isaacson book did him a tremendous disservice. It was just a rehash of a bunch of stuff that had already been written, and focused on small parts of his personality.”
Jony Ive: “My regard [for Isaacson’s book] couldn’t be any lower.”
Eddy Cue: “Becoming Steve Jobs (book): Well done and first to get it right.”
Just as the brouhaha was beginning to boil, I got a chance to interview Walter Isaacson himself, at the SXSW festival in Austin. I asked him about all of this sudden retroactive sniping about his depiction of Steve Jobs.
As you’ll see from the video excerpt, I had been pleasantly surprised at how well Isaacson had balanced the tyrant/genius aspects of Steve Jobs. But in Isaacson’s view, more viewpoints are always welcome. Only when all biographies are considered in their entirety will history begin to get a complete picture of the man.
We know that Microsoft's upcoming OS Windows 10 is under development and testing and a free Technical Preview build is available for download to public:
This Preview build can be installed and used as a primary operating system but you may face bugs and issues as its a testing build.
Microsoft is regularly releasing updates to Windows 10 OS which bring new features, fixes and improvements. These new updates can be downloaded and installed using Settings -> Update and recovery -> Windows Update page as mentioned in following article:
But there is a big issue with this process. The update builds are very big in size because these builds are basically full setup ISOs of Windows 10 and users need to wait for many hours to complete the upgrade process.
Also if a user wants to install these new Windows 10 updates in more than one computer, he'll need to download the updates separately in all computers. It causes waste of Internet connection bandwidth as well as users time.
Many Windows 10 testers were complaining about this issue since the release of Windows 10 update builds and now Microsoft has listened to their requests.
Microsoft has released offline ISO files of Windows 10 Technical Preview build 10041 (March Update) to public. The ISO files are available in both 32-bit (x86) as well as 64-bit (x64) editions. ISO files are available in following languages: English (United States), English (United Kingdom), Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazilian), German, French, French (Canada), Russian, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Czech, Arabic, Korean, Finnish and Thai.
You can download the ISO files of Windows 10 TP build 10041 from following link:
After downloading the ISO file, you can burn it to a DVD using disc burning software or create abootable USB drive to install Windows 10 in your computer. If asked, you'll need to use following product key at the time of installation:
NKJFK-GPHP7-G8C3J-P6JXR-HQRJR
The system requirements for Windows 10 is same as Windows 8/8.1 system requirements. If your computer can run Windows 8/8.1, it'll also be able to run Windows 10.
Finally Microsoft has released a free preview of its upcoming Office suite i.e. Office 2016 to public but there are a few things to note.
At the moment this free Office 2016 preview can only be downloaded and installed using Office 365 ProPlus subscription. So if you have a subscription, you can enjoy the free preview otherwise you'll need to wait for some time until Microsoft releases the free preview to all.
The Office 365 ProPlus subscription is required to download this preview because Microsoft has released the preview to business, commercial customers, IT pros and developers only. That's why Microsoft is calling this preview as "IT Pro and Developer Preview of Office 2016 for Windows desktop".
Since its just an early preview version, it doesn't contain all the features which will be available in the final version of Office 2016. But Microsoft will keep adding new features to this preview version through monthly updates. Also this preview will not run side-by-side with any previous installed version of Office.
Now let's talk about the new features of Office 2016!
Microsoft at Office blog has provided a list of new features and functionality which you'll see in Office 2016 preview:
Accessibility:
Improvement in keyboard accessibility for high-value Excel features like PivotTables and Slicers
Fixed readability issues in Outlook
Addition of a new dark theme (that will really make all people happy [link])
Outlook:
Following improvements have been made to Outlook 2016:
RPC-based sync replaced by new MAPI-HTTP protocol to support Exchange/Outlook connectivity
Use of foreground network calls eliminated to make Outlook more responsive on unreliable networks
Support for multi-factor authentication through integration with Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL)
Improvements in email delivery performance such as downloading messages, displaying message list and showing new emails after resuming from hibernation
New settings to better manage disk storage by only retaining 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days of mail on the device
Improvements in reliability, performance and usability of Outlook search
Integration of FAST-based search engine in Exchange
Click-to-Run deployment:
Office 365 subscribers will get new deployment features as following:
Better network traffic management with the help of new Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS)
Better integration with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to allow admins to efficiently download and distribute monthly Office updates
New options to manage the frequency of feature updates and bug fixes download
Simplified activation management to allow admins to manage device activations across users
Data Loss Protection (DLP):
In past DLP feature was available in Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint only. Now the same feature has been implemented in Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs of Office 2016. With the help of DLP, you can create, manage and enforce polices for content authoring and document sharing as a part of user restrictions.
Information Rights Management (IRM):
Implementation of IRM protection in Visio files to enable both online and offline protection of Visio diagrams.
If you have Office 365 ProPlus subscription, you can download and install Office 2016 preview using following link:
At the above mentioned link, first you'll need to register for Office 2016 preview by providing some general information such as name, company name, email ID, etc. After registering, you'll get access to Office 2016 preview download page where you'll need to download a small script which will allow you to install Office 2016 preview version.
Office 2016 Preview is available in following languages: English, Arabic, Brazilian (Portuguese), Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Korean. More languages will be supported in future releases.
Microsoft is changing its strategy, but it isn't being foolish
Microsoft is clearly in a more generous mood than it was a few years ago. Windows 10 has been promised as a free upgrade, Windows 8.1 with Bing is free on compact devices, and you can now use Office mobile and online apps for free as well. And speaking at Microsoft’s Convergence conference yesterday, the company’s Chris Capossella talked about its current four-step “acquire, engage, enlist and monetise” strategy.
Some have seen this as an indication that the company as a whole plans to embrace a “freemium” business model, wherein the basic software is given away for free, but the user is invited to pay for the fully-featured experience.
It’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t quite fit with what’s really happening. The free Windows 10 upgrade isn’t crippled; nor does Windows 8.1 with Bing come with strings attached, apart from a freely changeable browser default. You no longer need an Office 365 account to make full use of Office for iOS either: if anything, Microsoft is moving away from freemium-type thinking.
Rather, Microsoft’s strategy is based on the traditional loss-leader model. Caposella’s talk focused on how Apple and Google guide users from one product to another, and of course Microsoft wants to emulate that. Keeping people on Windows puts them in position to buy apps from the App Store, and it’s this that the company sees as the real growth opportunity. Apple’s iTunes App Store took in as much revenue last year as Microsoft’s entire consumer Windows division. Apple takes a 30% cut of that, and much of it will be profit.
And let’s not forget that Microsoft isn’t solely a consumer giant. It’s also a huge force in business computing, which last year accounted for 47% of its total revenue. Switching to a freemium model here would be commercial suicide – but there’s a big challenge from BYOD. So again, the company has every incentive to try to keep users on its platform, and thereby keep its tremendously profitable business customers onside.
For sure, we are seeing Microsoft experiment with fresh business models, and that’s great to see. But if you’ve ever played a freemium game you’ll know that those pop-ups demanding payment tend only to foster resentment and frustration. So far, Satya Nadella’s Microsoft has shown an impressive sensitivity to the user experience: going freemium would risk driving customers away at the worst possible time.
Happily, the company is playing a much smarter game than that.
The Pangu Team, which has thus far been responsible for a number of untethered jailbreaks across iOS 7 and 8, has finally broken its silence towards the constant public vilification and criticism by certain corners of the mobile security industry by posting an open and soul-bearing letter to its public facing website. The in-depth blog post has been given the title “Jailbreak Should not Tolerate Regional Discrimination,” and tackles many of the important issues that the team has been continually vilified for since entering the often controversial world of iOS jailbreaking.
Although it’s clearly evident that the issues tackled within the letter have been brewing away under the surface for quite some time, it seems that the catalyst for actually publishing the retort was a recent perceived attack on the team by Stefan Esser - a well known security research specialist, otherwise known as i0n1c – at the SyScan (Security for Asia Network) conference in Singapore, which they feel was “racist and full of morbid allegations.” Strong words indeed.
We encourage anyone invested in the jailbreak world, either as a developer or a liberated device user, to read the letter in full as it not only contains some valuable content, but also exists as an attempt to dismiss some of the more absurd allegations that have fallen on the team since its creation. As you might expect, one of the more pressing matters that the letter covers is the financial sponsorship of the team, effectively dismissing the speculation that it received $1 million to release its tools.
The letter also attempts to refute claims that Pangu were doing wrong by utilizing kernel information leaks that were discussed in detail as part of a security talk held by aforementioned Esser. In an attempt to preserve another known vulnerability, it appears that the Pangu Team utilized the existing vulnerability, which they claim was already in the public domain, before swapping this out in a revamped version of the jailbreak tool based on received criticism.
After covering a few other contentious issues, such as working closely with Cydia creator Jay Freeman and denying that stolen enterprise certificates were used as part of the jailbreak process, the Pangu Team sign off the open letter by declaring that the jailbreak community “should not judge a work for its’ developers race, creed, color or religion.” Regardless of our own opinions, we think that’s definitely a tune that we can all sing along to.
Just like the Xbox 360’s famed Ring of Death, the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is almost always a sure sign that your PC is in need of a service, but while it has been the bane of Windows users’ lives for many a year, it’s not something we would usually associate with Apple products.
However, while the iPhone 5s has yielded mainly positive publicity since first being unveiled a couple of weeks back, it would appear as though quite a few users of Apple’s latest and greatest flagship smartphone are seeing their own version of the Blue Screen of Death. Although the issue doesn’t seem to be widespread, it’s rather ironic that even though the iPhone is constructed in a different way, by a different company, and runs on a completely different platform, it still cannot escape grisly death by blue screen.
Of course, dramatics aside, it doesn’t seem as though the blue screen is a result of any hardware or mechanical failure. Instead, it looks to be an issue that crops up when Apple’s own iWork apps are in use, although some users have reported occasions of the Blue Screen of Death at random times.
It forces the handset to reboot, and although there seems to be a growing level of panic among a certain faction of the iPhone 5s community, it’s hopefully something Apple can come through and fix in an iOS software update. The fruit company only recently dropped iOS 7.0.2, which saw to those glaring holes in the lock screen allowing potential intruders to run riot, and although the release of iOS 7 has been fairly incident-free in comparison to iOS 6 and the Maps fiasco, new software will almost always encounter one or two teething issues at the beginning.
As for a solution to the iPhone 5s’s very own Blue Screen of Death, there are one or two. Notably, if your BSOD occurs when using iWork, disabling iCloud syncing for each of the three iWork apps should stop the blue screen from cropping up. Obviously, if you absolutely need iCloud sync on a regular basis, then you are probably going to have to persevere and hope that Apple comes through swiftly with a fix.
After numerous rumors and intense speculation, Microsoft’s fantastic and extremely popular Office package has managed to find its way onto the iPhone. The package, which landed on Apple’s App Store today, is a mobile optimized companion app that has been built from the ground up to provide access to the loved Office suite of applications directly from an iPhone. This is a fairly notable release by the Redmond company and has been expected for some time, but for some reason has managed to come with minimal fuss and a distinct lack of celebration.
The gratis price-tag associated with the Office Mobile application may get a lot of iPhone users initially excited, but nothing everything is as it seems. The app is indeed free to download, but requires an active Office 365 subscription to be able to use the functionality and features that are built into the mobile optimized product. For those that would consider such a subscription to be able to get those enhanced levels of mobile productivity, the Office 365 package is currently retailing at $99.99 annually. The inclusion of this latest Microsoft release should be enough in some cases to entice a new wave of subscriptions.
As for the product itself, well it offers pretty much everything that you would expect from a mobile Office companion application. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents can be created, viewed and edited with minimal fuss and the powerful features within the app ensures that documents are displayed in their original format regardless of how they were created. The built-n support for charts, animations and various shapes means that the integrity of the document should be maintained regardless of whether it is accessed from a desktop app or this mobile variant.
Cloud based documents are easily accessible through the Office for iPhone offering, meaning that any compatible creation stored in SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro are within reach. The support for complex documents, the aesthetics of the app and the impressive feature set clearly show that Microsoft have gone all out on this one and are dedicated to increasing their Office 365 subscription based by offering this free app as a deal sweetener.
There’s no denying that the app looks like a very polished release, but we should all know by now that there is usually a downside attached to these things. Aside from the fact that the product requires the Office 365 subscription, it is also only available for US based users at the moment. Hopefully by the time it filters through to other countries there will also be an iPad variant available.
So what do you guys think? Is this subscription based Office release for iPhone enough for people to pay for the most popular Office productivity suite on iOS? Or do you think alternatives such as Apple’s own iWork and Quickoffice are more than enough for all the documents and presentation needs? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
Hitherto, we have been under the impression that Apple would be offering its next smartphone release the "5S" moniker, following the same, ‘tick-tock’ release cycle as demonstrated over the course of the past few generations. However, new inventory listings sourced from UK carrier / retailer Vodafone suggest the device may make the jump to "iPhone 6," which, at least in theory, would bring a stronger array of changes than the "incremental" ones we had been expecting with the iPhone 5S.
With that said, many, including a former advisor to the late Steve Jobs, have slammed the naming schemes of Apple products, with the "S" releases in between number updates garnering the most flak for not truly reflecting the nature of the changes therein. For example, as many have argued, although the iPhone 5 has brought a slightly larger display, svelte form factor and a relatively minor spec bump, these features don’t present enough to justify a perceived "major" release.
As pointed out on numerous occasions, these "S" releases imply something of a half-hearted effort, and although Apple could release the same seventh-gen iPhone under the name "iPhone 5S" or "iPhone 6," the latter implies users will be getting the landmark release, as opposed to a tentative spec upgrade.
Certainly, with the Cupertino under increasing pressure to improve its mobile software with iOS 7 (something Jony Ive is right at the heart of doing), the kicker of an "iPhone 6" in 2013 would doubtlessly help ease the situation.
The leak was first sourced by Stuff magazine, with a shot from a till system one of Vodafone’s UK stores listing a "4G iPhone 6". Although it could simply have been cooked up by somebody looking to throw the blogosphere a curveball, the snap was apparently taken by a Vodafone employee, and whilst we’re taking this with the proverbial pinch of salt, it’s certainly food for thought given Apple’s current predicament.
We expect the fruit company to deliver iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 in June, with the next-gen iPhone following soon after in September. Whether it is to be called the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 remains to be seen, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated with any further information, so stay tuned!
The first time I reviewed a robot vacuum cleaner, it was the Roomba — in 2003. My daughter was 4 years old. She brightly informed me that this thing should be called a Broomba, not a Roomba. Because “it’s an electric broom, not an electric room!”
Back then, there was nothing like it: A weird, round disk, 4 inches high and 14 inches across, that could vacuum your bare floors and carpets all by itself. It was amazingly entertaining to watch, especially if you were a cat.
Roomba busily scuttled under furniture, comically backed off from collisions, and drove an unpredictable path through the room that seemed logical only to its own little robot brain.
In the ensuing 12 years, the Roomba has picked up a long list of improvements. And it became surrounded by competitors. All of them cost less than the Roomba, sometimes a lot less.The question is: Can any of them beat its price/performance standard?
As it turns out, yes.
The lineup
There aren’t enough floor tiles in my state to accommodate all of the robovacs on the market. I rounded up four of the best reviewed, fromiRobot, Neato, Infinuvo, and Ecovacs. Their prices range from $400 to $700, but keep in mind that my quest was to find the best robovac. I asked each company to loan me its top-of-the-line model. (Bottom-of-the-line robovacs cost as little as $250.)
Each robot comes with a little home base/charger. Incredibly, when these robots are finished cleaning a room or running low on battery power, they drive themselves back to the base, nuzzle up to it, and park for the night.
You read that right: These robots plug themselves in to recharge.Surely it won’t be long before they become self-aware and begin raking, folding laundry, and unloading the dishwasher.
These vacuums can’t clean stairs, but at least they don’t go plunging over them, either, thanks to built-in infrared “cliff sensors.”
The iRobot Roomba and Infinuvo Hovo each come with what looks like a little black pencil sharpener. It’s actually a battery-powered, invisible barrier, which shoots out an invisible, infrared beam that its robot won’t cross. That’s how you confine your robovac in one room.
All but the Neato Botvac come with a little plastic remote control, too. Rationally, you don’t need one; the whole point of these robots is that they’re automatic. You’re supposed to schedule them to vacuum your whole place while you’re away, so that everything’s gleaming and clean when you come home; what good would a remote do you?
But people are people, and they like to take control even when they know that the robot would be better off left alone. Thus the remote.
All four product manuals emphasize that you shouldn’t drive the robovacs over wet floors and that you should clear the room of toys and wires before you begin using them. Each robot runs for 60 to 90 minutes on a charge.
So yes, in many ways, these robovacs work alike and look alike. They’re much quieter than actual vacuum cleaners, they’re objects of fascination for cats and dogs, and — expectations set? — they don’t do quite as good a job at cleaning as a human being would.
But as the competition has heated up, these companies have cultivated some unique, eyebrow-raising features all their own. Here is a mini-review of each of the four contenders.
Roomba 880 ($700)
The company iRobot has a division that makes bomb-sniffing and search-and-rescue robots for the military. It has the longest track record in robovacs for consumers (and robotic moppers, mowers, and gutter cleaners). You’d expect it, therefore, to have the vacuuming edge in this roundup.
And it does. The Roomba is the best navigator of the four vacuums; it didn’t get stuck even once in my minefield of a living room. Or, rather, it did, but only briefly — then it shook off the obstruction, backed up, and chose a different path.
The cleaning is excellent, on carpets, bare floors, and the transitions between them. Its path appears to be random — it cruises along a wall, for example, and abruptly turns and darts into the middle of the room. Or it will zigzag across a spot it considers worthy of more attention.
If you just go away and let it finish, you’ll find that it has indeed swept the whole room. But clearly, it drives people crazy that the Roomba’s path isn’t more comprehensible, which is why rival Neato did something about that (read on).
The design is dark, high-end, and high-tech. A central Clean button is the sleep/wake switch; punch it twice to make it start cleaning the whole room. Below that, you’ll find small silver buttons for Dock (“find your way home and recharge yourself”), Clock (sets the clock), Schedule (program automatic cleanings), and Spot (circle around a particularly grubby area).
The Roomba 880’s sweepers are rubberized cylinders, not the usual vacuum cleaner-style brushes. The advantage here is that you never have to spend time unraveling cat hair from bristles. They work great.
The 880 comes with two of those infrared-beam doorway-blocking things. But on the Roomba, these terminals have a switch that lets you choose either Virtual Wall and Lighthouse. The Lighthouse function guides the Roomba to a second room when the first one is clean — a handy option that nobody else offers.
Neato Botvac 85 ($500)
This robot is the bad-boy rebel of robovac designs. It’s white, for one thing. And it’s not round; it’s D-shaped. The company says that the two corners are better for cleaning along walls and in corners.
That’s not necessarily true. The Roomba, for example, is round, but its funny little spinning brush protrudes well past the curved case and allows for cleaning near walls and corners.
The Neato company also touts its “laser scanning” technology: When you turn the thing on, it takes a few seconds to scan the room (“using the same technology on Google’s self-driving cars!,” exclaimed a PR rep). Then it’s supposed to drive a more comprehensible, straight coverage path — more like how you’d mow a lawn than the random-looking zigzags of the other robovacs.
That’s not necessarily true, either. In a room full of furniture, the Botvac does plenty of weird circling and doubling back. Meanwhile, you’re advised not to move anything in the room once the vacuuming begins, for fear of messing with the robot’s hard-won conception of your layout.
In other words, it’s not clear that either of Neato’s big breakthroughs actually gains you that much.
But what’s also clear is that the Botvac cleans as well as the Roomba. Its dustbin is incredibly easy to access and empty, and it’s the largest on the market — a welcome detail.
Above all, Neato’s Botvac costs hundreds of dollars less than the Roomba. The top-of-the-line model 85 costs $500 (compared to Roomba’s $700). And here’s a little tip: The only thing that differentiates the various Neato models is the accessories that come with them (filters and whatnot), which you can also buy later. And Neato models start at $260.
Neato’s Botvac doesn’t come with a remote control. It doesn’t come with an infrared-beam terminal, either, to confine the robot to one room. (Instead, you’re supposed to lay down a heavy magnetic strip across the room opening; you get 13 feet of it.) And its plasticky design seems to have been inspired by a late ’80s game console.
But you might learn to live without those extras as you admire the crisp $100 bills that are still in your wallet.
Ecovacs Deebot D77 ($700)
In its attempts to differentiate itself, this vacuum goes in a direction nobody else has dared to go: up.
The Deebot’s recharger/home base is far more noticeable than its rivals’, because it has a secret power. When the robot trundles back home to charge, it empties itself. That big, clear cylinder above it turns on and sucks all the dirt, dust, and grit out of the robot. That’s correct: This robot recharges and empties itself. (You still have to manually pull out hair and Cheerios occasionally.)
Cleverer yet, that cylinder detaches (with a press of a gray button situated, unfortunately, on the wall side, where you can’t see it). You can then snap the cylinder into a half-sleeve thing that plugs into the wall and turns the whole thing into — a handheld vacuum!
The Deebot is, in other words, two vacuums in one: a robot for the floors and a handheld for stairs, curtains, and other higher-up surfaces. You get a bunch of hoses, extensions, and end-piece accessories for the handheld.
It’s a great idea. It’s also a bit of a pain to assemble and disassemble every time you want to use the hand vac.
Worse, the robot does a terrible job of vacuuming carpet. (Our video crew joked that of course this product comes with a hand vacuum — you’ll need it to clean up after the robot!)
And the Deebot doesn’t come with any kind of barrier — no infrared beam, no magnetic strip. So if you want it to stay in one room, you’ll have to pile up boxes or furniture to block it.
Infinuvo Hovo 650 ($400)
The Hovo is inexpensive. But its dustbin box is microscopic — my cat’s sheddings from a single lunch hour could fill it up.
It’s also really dumb. (The robot, not the cat.)
The first big problem is that it gets stuck constantly — on rugs, on furniture, even in corners. Here it is, bumbling dumbly over and over again into the same corner (I finally had to pick it up and move it):
Anyone who has nightmares of robots becoming smart enough to turn on us is invited to watch this dimwit for a few minutes.
You should also know that this vacuum has only a tiny sucking hole on the bottom (It’s the yellow slot you can see two photos down from here). It doesn’t have any kind of rotating brush cylinder, like the others, so it doesn’t pick up as much.
The Hovo’s singular feature is its semicircular snap-on, mop-pad attachment. You can pour water or cleaning solution into its reservoir, snap it onto the robot, and marvel as it drives around on your bare floor, leaving a wet trail as it goes.
The entire “system” is basically a piece of damp carpet dragging across the floor, so it’s not clear how much cleaning is actually getting done. But if your expectations are low, you might be pleased enough.
Robot wars: The verdict
There are really two questions here. First, is a robovacuum worth getting? Will it really keep your house cleaner than it is now, or will the robot wind up in the junk closet?
There’s no doubt: A human pushing a vacuum can clean floors faster and better than a robovac can. But having to be that person, or hirethat person, is a considerable drawback of this approach.
From that perspective, a robovac is indeed a worthy investment. It charges itself; it runs by itself on a schedule you choose. So if it’s reliable, you’ll come home to find your place pretty well vacuumed up without any effort on your part (except remembering to empty the dust container).
If you didn’t have to pay for your robot vac, the Roomba would win this battle. Its navigation and cleaning are the best, its software and programming the most sophisticated, and its infrared terminals the most versatile.
But it’s not $200 better than the Neato. The Botvac series is very smart, rarely gets hung up, cleans well, and is a snap to use. Its laser room scanner isn’t as good at navigating as Google’s self-driving car, but hey — Google’s car isn’t such a great vacuum cleaner, either.
