Steam hard surface floor cleaners

[sligoNoSPAMjoe]

Has anyone tried one of those steam cleaners? Did you like it or hate it?

[HeyBub]

I've got one of these:

I rap a rag around the floor brush and essentially mop with it. Works swell. Much easier to use than a regular mop.

It also remove wall linguini.

[ransley]

I have a nice kitchen aid dishwasher, but I hand wash dishes

[sligoNoSPAMjoe]

For anyone interested, my wife now has one and she is very happy with it. It does seem to be doing a good job and the specific one we have seems to have impressive engineering.

[Jo Ann]

I have a low-end model (Shark), but it works well enough to keep me interested in getting a better one. It doesn't clean nearly as well as shown in the infomercials (try to contain your shock at this), but it does a decent job. Probably no faster overall than a regular mop, but it is nice to dispense with the water bucket, and there's clearly a savings over buying floor cleaning products. The things that bug me the most about the Shark are: requires several changes of pad while cleaning if floor is very dirty, and the pads are ridiculously expensive; doesn't hold enough water to do a very large area in one filling; the leading edge of the cleaning pad tends to come loose, making mopping difficult. Looks to me like they've improved that last one in the newer model. The Shark typically sells for about $60-$70, which IMO would be a ripoff. I paid $40 and still consider it a somewhat marginal value; it's extremely cheaply made.