When I bought my house, it was carpeted. When I found out I was expecting, I didn't want my baby rolling/playing on the carpet so we replaced the carpet with laminate flooring. I have 2 dogs and 2 cats. All of them shed and now that I have laminate flooring, the hair is very noticeable. I needed something where I could go to bed and wake up with my floor freshly vacuumed! This is why I bought the Neato! Its like the Roomba, but its got a more powerful suction than the roomba. You can pre-program the Neato 7 days a week in a 24 hour window, you can spot clean in one area and you can press the clean button for an on demand clean. It has a built in removable bagless dirt collector which, in my case, needs to be emptied after every cleaning. If you have a large living area that needs to be cleaned, and the machine needs to recharge before finishing the job, it will automatically go back to its charge station, and once charged, it will go back from when it stopped to continue cleaning. I love my Neato, yet the machine its self is a little noisy. But when I'm sleeping, I don't wake when its doing its midnight cleaning!