ABOUT WOMEN
Here's to vacuuming robots, flying cars and real scrubbing bubbles

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

From the moment I turned it on in the store, I was intrigued.

It looked like something out of "The Jetsons." A robotic vacuum cleaner a little bigger than a Frisbee. Cool.

Never before had I been fascinated by a household appliance. I'm not a gadget guru or a neat freak, but I kept thinking about this thing that could clean my floors while I, uh, sat on the couch or something.

So there I was, sitting on the couch one night, flipping through channels, and the robotic vacuum was calling to me from an infomercial. The next day, in a moment of weakness, I went back to the store and bought it, for $200.

I couldn't wait to get home from work the next night to test out my fully charged new toy. I set it free as soon as I walked in the door and sat mesmerized for half an hour as it navigated around my furniture. (Sure, I could have swept up faster myself, but this was much more fun.) I left the little robot unsupervised in the bedroom, while it got clogged with fabric-softener sheets under my bed and beeped to alert me it had found dust monsters lurking there.

Marketers of the world, let me tell you, household gadgets like this that make cleaning easier are to women what power tools are to men. Please make more. Invent something to do my other chores. Fold my clothes. Clean my jalousie windows. Wash my screens. Brush the toilet bowl. Make scrubbing bubbles that really scrub. I will watch, lazily, completely hypnotized. And it will make me happy.

This is the kind of home improvement that would be even better than Rosie the robot.

Forget miniature cameras disguised as lipstick. Dick Tracy's talking timepiece and Maxwell Smart's shoe phone pale in comparison to my technological fantasy.

I'm not what you would call technologically savvy. It took me forever to get rid of my America Online account because I didn't want to go through the trouble of changing my e-mail address. And switching cell phones was a hassle because I had to reprogram everyone's phone number.

I don't own a global positioning system or a personal digital assistant or a DVD player. I don't even have a dishwasher.

But it makes me feel a little better to know that smart people out there have women in mind for some of the gadgets on the market.

I've watched friends and colleagues succumb to the powers of the PDA. Most were men who didn't have gigantic purses for collecting all those scraps of paper the way women can. Then one of my girlfriends told me she downloaded a menstrual calendar on her PDA. Amazing. I'm surprised that even exists. Her electronic device also has a fertility calculator and a place to save doctor and hairdresser appointments. Judy Jetson never had anything like that.

I'm ready for the wave of the future. I've read about an automatic lawn mower that sounds neat, but it's a little out of my price range. I'm saving up for the flying car. Then I'll have exciting places to go while my floor is being vacuumed.

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.