cleaners

People who hate housework will soon have two more robots to handle the chores.

iRobot this week will unveil the Scooba 230 floor washer and the next-generation Roomba 700 series of vacuums.

iRobot already has a line of Scooba floor washers, but the company is touting the Scooba 230 as a leaner cleaner. At 3.5 inches high and 6.5 inches wide, the 230 is geared to squeeze into tight places, such as underneath furniture and around bathroom fixtures. The 230 holds enough cleaning fluid to take care of 150 square feet of space in one session, iRobot said.… Read more

Nobody likes hoovering. It's an enormous chore, but sadly, until they invent non-crumbling cookies we're stuck with it. If running a vacuum cleaner 'round the place is doing your back and head in, you'll like the Foki shoe--a concept product that lets you "shoe-ver" your house.

Foki is a vacuum cleaner concept developed by Indonesian industrial designer Adika Titut Triyugo that definitely does not suck--even though it does. Don your housecoat and pinafore, put your hair up in rollers, and step into your Foki shoes to see what we mean.

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Attention all slobs: for this week's giveaway, we've got the Mint automatic floor cleaner that some people like to refer to as a robot. The Mint has a sophisticated NorthStar navigation system that allows it to navigate a room and get around obstacles, like chair and table legs, while picking up dust and nastier stuff. The company calls the system "indoor GPS."

CNET blogger Timothy Hornyak liked the Mint's simplicity, silent operation, and said it worked well as a light cleaner. Mint can clean hard floors with the included reusable microfiber cloths or disposable wet … Read more

Windows' built-in Disk Cleanup tool does a pretty good job, but it's designed to be as easy and harmless as possible, and many users prefer a third-party tool. Disk Cleaner is a free, open-source, standalone hard-disk cleaning utility that's designed to be fast and easy to use yet thorough in its operation.

We ran the Windows Disk Cleanup tool before running Disk Cleaner to better gauge Disk Cleaner's supposed advantages. Amazingly, the Windows utility quit working during the cleanup process, despite a robust system that was fairly clean to begin with. We then ran Disk Cleaner, which … Read more

Hello, I'm Peggy Yu, senior manager of business development at Download.com. Just like promotions posted in this space by Catherine Hwang, I'm here today to help bring Download.com users the best software deals available. Today we have a particularly good deal for popular maintenance suite Glary Utilities Pro. For the next 24 hours, we have an exclusive offer of 50 percent off Glary Utilities Pro.

Why would you want Glary Utilities Pro? Glary Utilities Pro offers a simple, but nicely designed tabbed interface for performing system cleanup and maintenance. Its basic scan includes a Registry cleaner, … Read more

In our work reviewing software, we are constantly installing and uninstalling programs, and that means that we end up with a whole lot of junk left behind on our computer. We're always interested in checking out programs that can help us tidy up. WinUtilities Free Disk Cleaner is one such program. This handy utility scans computers for junk files that can negatively impact system performance, and, unlike most such programs, it helps users to avoid deleting important files accidentally.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive, with a wizard-style design that quickly walks users through each step of … Read more

Believe it or not, my favorite new gadget at home is not the iPad. Sure, Apple's tablet is cool and all, but it hasn't picked up a single Cheerio off the floor. Not one--there's not an app for that!

On the other hand, the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner I bought works tirelessly, vigorously, and automatically, scuttling around the house, sweeping floors and carpets as it goes, then returning to its dock for recharging. Frankly, it makes my children look like a couple of slackers.

J&R has the Roomba 530 for $269.88 with free shipping, … Read more

Does your Mac feel sluggish? Internet surfing, downloading software, and just plain regular use are all major contributors to filling up your hard drive with useless files. As time goes by, your Mac starts to fill up with cache files, unused language files, and even leftover installers, making your whole system struggle to keep track of it all. You can go through and try to clean out a lot of these files manually, but knowing that it might take you a significant amount of time makes it easy to put off until later.

Fortunately, there are a number of utilities … Read more

This program, like many others, promises to clean your Registry, make your computer run faster, and, if you're lucky, do your dishes, too. At least when it comes to cleaning your Registry, Advanced Registry Optimizer seems to do a pretty good job.

The scan process was easy to initiate and was done in about 3 minutes, although don't forget that the scan time depends on the computer system. A smart-looking row of five tabs and their labels makes navigating the program options stress-free, and the lack of lag on the system was much appreciated. The user interface has … Read more