Rediculous concept

Today while at K-Mart I was looking for a new LitterMaid litter box as the Mega version is, well, to be blunt, a piece of crap. Actually more like many small pieces. You see, the rake goes down to about 1/8 above the bottom so as it sweeps across it mangles all the clumps into small little pieces that it then collects behind the rake.

I'd gotten one of the older versions at a local store only to discover that it didn't work at all. Plugged it in, nothing.

So, back to K-Mart. They had the following:

You might not be able to read the box, but it's a SEMI-Automatic device. You have to wait ten minutes after the cat uses it and then step on a foot pedal.

I'll ask, how many people are going to watch the dang-gummed box all day and then wait ten minutes after it's used to step on the pedal???? Really? I'm just glad I looked closely at the box! I came very close to buying this without really reading what it is.

I'll note, I could NOT find this product on the LitterMaid website so I'm wondering if this is a very low end (~$70) product that they aren't touting very much?

As it is, I'm still looking for the first/second generation of LitterMaid because my friend has one and says it works well for her. Anyone have other automatic boxes to recommend? Or any other system? I HATE scooping the ^&%*&^(^ cat box!