How Tech Gifts Can Help Your Home

Peaches is a dander-flinging calico cat who lives in a cozy home in a mid-size American college town.

On the evening of Thanksgiving, the irresistible aroma from slowly roasting turkey made Peaches even more manic than usual. Cooking scents caused her to excitedly scamper about for several hours. The amount of cat hair on the living room floor was testament to her propensity to shed with every step. The grains of cat food on the kitchen floor were evidence of Peaches' customary lack of refinement.

Out came the Roomba Pro, a $229.99 robotic floor cleaner that is made for tasks such as cleaning kitchen floors and living room rugs. My girlfriend was skeptical that this 6-pound, 13-inch flying-saucer-shape device would be able to handle discarded fur and food. She had consigned Roomba to the category of expensive toy -- a gimmick.

We put Roomba to the test. We broke out two virtual wall units, small block-like devices that send out signals to define the specific area to be cleaned. After we charged up Roomba, it cut loose.

Roomba is often described as a "robotic floor vacuum," but it is actually more of a fancy carpet sweeper. Operating on battery power, it cruises through a pre-defined cleaning area and repeatedly visits spots until it picks everything up that it possibly can -- crumbs from the pumpkin pie we ate while sitting on the couch, a leaf or two brought in from the soggy footpath, and cat hair.

Using timing controls on the top of Roomba, we set the unit on an approximately 20-minute living-room patrol, and a separate 20-minute kitchen detail. It studiously avoided walls. After about 15 minutes in the living room, Roomba automatically shut down, its way of asking us to remove its particle bin. Out came the cat hair, bread crumbs and a leaf. We slipped the particle bin back into the machine and switched it back on.

The verdict? Because Roomba is a sweeper, not a true vacuum, it will not be a true substitute for deep cleanings best rendered by loyal housekeepers or live-in teenagers. Neither will Roomba shampoo your carpet. Roomba's primary value is to keep your bare, linoleum or carpeted floors clean enough to make the occasional, more intense cleaning tasks more bearable, efficient and less time-consuming. To use the vernacular favored by so many in the town with the house where we put Roomba to the test, it is "way cool."

You may not have a robot to do your chores, but how "techie" is your home? You can find out by using the Consumer Electronics' Association's TechHome Rating System. The link leads to a brochure that helps you grade your home's "technological infrastructure" based on six categories, including various home entertainment, communications, and PC-oriented networking; home security; "comfort and convenience" appliances and solutions; and structured wiring.

The rating system is similar to one of those points-driven personality tests where you find out you have some work to do on yourself. It's useful as a baseline that helps you assess the types of products and systems you need to get your home up to speed.

It can also serve as a suggestion list of gifts to make your home more digitally sophisticated. While the system does not recommend specific brands, it does point to specific technologies, many of which are suitable for gifts.

A few gift suggestions based on the components of a "tech home" include a set of in-wall speakers, such as the Bose Virtually Invisible 191 ($348), the Honeywell CT3200A Programmable Thermostat ($42.95), and any brand of closed-circuit camera, from $100 models to those best installed by professional contractors or home-security services.

Although air purifiers do not appear on the rating system's list, I recommend the $77 Hepatech 10-30010. The 7-pound unit proved more than effective at neutralizing the allergens kicked into the air when Roomba unearthed the mounds of cat hair deposited by Peaches.

Russell Shaw is a consumer technology journalist and author based in Portland, Ore. His Web site is RussellShaw.net.