…and I’m getting a little stressed out about how to be gracious about it.
Kayla’s BFF since junior high will be accompanying the family on our trip to the Disney Aulani resort in January. Kayla is a Disney cast member, and gets a 60% employee discount in the week that we’re going. Her friend will be making a contribution to defray the cost of the plane ticket.
Apparently, she feels that the largesse of participation in in the vacation is properly responded to by buying kaylasmom and me a Christmas gift. Fair enough. She’s working full time at Walgreen’s at least until she takes the certification exam that will enable her to get a job as an LVN (she passed the coursework for it, during the fall), so she’s got some discretionary income to do it with.
Over the past week we have been moving out from one unit and into another in our complex, and in the course of digging our way out of the chaos, I went into Kayla’s room to put some stuff away. While there, I saw a box from Amazon, about the right size for an Echo. And I saw the address label has my name on it.
I’ve heard of some things that the Echo can do around the home, but to the best of my knowledge, they mostly involve either making it easier to buy more shiny crap, or are tasks that require buying widgets and gizmos that allow appliances to be remotely operated.
As mentioned above, I want to be able to receive it graciously, because I would feel churlish just sending it back.
Are there any functions that the Echo can perform that neither require me to buy enabling devices nor make it easier for me to spend my money just because it’s a nifty, space age-y trick that it can do?
Do you have an Amazon Prime subscription? If you do, you can listen to all the Prime music for free, make playlists, etc.
If you don’t, the Echo still has a whole bunch of “skills” you can enable (for example, it plays Jeopardy, gives you the news, and does all sorts of other things), and you can use it to set a timer or an alarm, answer cooking questions in the kitchen, play white noise to help you sleep…those are just a few of the things I’ve used mine for. I haven’t used it to buy one thing (shiny or otherwise) since I got it.
I liked it enough that I got another one for upstairs.
A friend at Amazon got test it (had no other involvement) is totally committed to it - uses it for all his music and many other things.
My sister bought a Dot (at $40, why not) and is hooked. I have watched her use it for music, quick questions, weather, traffic, cooking timers, turning TV on and off (via Harmony remote) and Jeopardy.
I’ve had an echo since they came out in beta. I’ve only used it once to buy something, because they were having a deal where if i bought something I was going to buy anyway I got a discount.
I use the echo almost daily. 90% of it is listening to music from my Prime account. Lately of course I’ve been listening to Christmas music. I found some free music to play for my dogs while I’m gone!
I also ask for the weather every day. Sometimes I use it as a timer and sometimes I use it to make a shopping list.
My nieces like to ask it to tell jokes. My dad likes to use it to define words. Lately I’ve been trying to remember to use it to play Jeopardy.
Have you read anything from Amazon about what the Echo does or are you just…guessing?
Isn’t your wife blind? I would think that a voice activated tool would be very welcome in your house!
Heh. A heartfelt “Thank you” (unaccompanied by haughty sniffing) was going to be my first step. I’m worried that not subsequently finding a use for it would undermine the sincerity of the thanks.
We bought one as soon as they were available and use it primarily for music. We listen from our prime playlist or Bluetooth stream music from our phones. Once I bought something because it was a Black Friday deal you got only though Echo. I’m thinking about getting a dot as well.
I don’t drive. Last week, I put eggs on my shopping list. You mean, if I had Echo, I could have just said “Put another dozen eggs in he fridge”?
I’ve seen the ads for it, and I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams ever asking that thing to do something for me. “I feel like a snack, go see what’s in he fridge.” Or, “what’s in that tupperware container in the back of the freezer under the pot pies?” I have a feeling that you can’t just walk in the house and tell it to do anyhthing, unless you have undertaken an elaborate program of setting up a digitally-activated system of performing the specific task before asking. Like “feed the dog”. Or “pull the car around to the front door”. Or “Trim my hair, not too much off the sides”. I suspect it is pretty much limited to “Is the sun shining?”, which I feel fairly competent to research for myself.
I use it for tons of stuff, very little to none that involve buying crap from Amazon.
The shopping list is especially useful. If I’m in the middle of cooking something, I can just say “Alexa, put more garlic on the shopping list” and there it is, I don’t have to remember later on that I used the last clove of garlic, or scramble around trying to find a pen and my paper grocery list.
The shopping list goes on the Echo app on my phone, so if I find myself at a grocery store, I can see what needs getting.
I also use it as a radio all the time. They recently updated how it works with public radio, so if I say “Alexa, play Morning Edition” and it’s past the 9am end-time of Morning Edition from my local NPR station, it finds a station in another time zone that is still playing Morning Edition or whatever.
I use it for music occasionally as well, but we tend to use our TV with Google Play more since the TV has nicer speakers.
It’s also handy for asking questions - “What NFL games are playing today?”, “What was the score of last night’s <whatever> game?”, “What’s 182 divided by 12”, “How old is Carrie Fisher?”, etc. etc.
I recently put one in the bedroom, and it’s very handy in the morning when I’m lying in bed and don’t really want to get up but I’m wondering what time it is. “Alexa, what time is it?” Yes, I am THAT lazy that I don’t want to turn over and look at the clock.
I have two Dots, and I use them constantly. They really can be very useful tools, and there is no reason why you would feel compelled to use them to make impulse buys from Amazon. The upstairs bedroom one is pretty much just my alarm clock. The downstairs one serves all sorts of purposes. I have it set up to control all of the downstairs lights. The lights are separated into three distinct groups, and I can turn on any one of the groups or all three at once via voice command or with my phone. Really nice when you come home during an ice storm and are struggling to get through the door juggling two dogs and five bags of groceries. The downstairs one also serves as my only source of music. I have it hooked up to a small 100-watt speaker about the size of a large can of peaches. I don’t have Amazon Prime, so I opted to pay $4.00/month for Amazon’s music service (the exact name escapes me now). It is virtually unstumpable. So far I have only identified one song not in its database. And I listen to some pretty obscure stuff. It’s also a fantastic kitchen tool, having the capability to set an unlimited number of alarms and timers. It can understand and answer natural-language queries, such as “Alexa, how old is Vanna White?,” a question I asked it last night. The unit responded a split second later with the response “Vanna White is 59 years old.” With the exception of the music service, all of this is free of charge. All in all, well worth the cost of the units, which sometime can be found on sale for $40 instead of the usual list price of $50. So by all means, if it does turn out to be an Echo, be grateful. You will discover many surprising uses for it.
I don’t see where reinforcing that kind of laziness is a good thing. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I have retained the capacity to steel myself under severe duress and rise to the challenge of turning my head 90 degrees to look at a clock. And some things that are even more demanding than that.
I belabor myself under the burden of a wipe board in the kitchen, with a marker hanging on a string. I write items on there as I discover them for grocery listing, then transfer them to a piece of paper for the trip to the store.
I love my dot. It doesn’t do anything a smartphone can’t do, but it can do it without me having to turn away my attention, which is nice given that I’ve got little ones underfoot. I love being able to call out to see if I need an umbrella while I’m on the way out to door, or I can set a timer while cooking without having to stop what I’m doing. It’s not a life changer, but it makes everything a little more seamless.
So this technology is not for you. That’s fine. It’s a useful tool for others. It’s all it is- a tool like a whiteboard. Some will find it fits into their lives better. However I hardly think a whiteboard is any more or less noble a tool than an electronic one.
For me, I often find myself going to the market unexpectedly, so a running list on my phone prevents me from forgetting items or duplicating things I have.
The OP raised the issue of whether it would actually be useful. I offered input addressing exactly that concern. There is nothing irrelevant about discussing the prospect of unrealistic expectations about a genuine lifestyle improvement, expecially if the OP raises them himself. Unrealistic expectations is not a small issue in today’s marketing strategies.
Gee whiz is not always the most efficient system for getting things done.