Amazon Discounts its Echo Smart Speaker Range Yet Again

My girlfriend's name is Alexa so this is no use for me.

They're pushing hard to get them in people's houses for the holidays.

I'm not sold on this sort of thing, regardless if it came from Amazon, Google or Apple. I just don't see the need or allure.

I tried one out way back in the beginning... Completly underwhelmed.

It was better at voice recognition than Siri, but I didn't like that outbound traffic on my network (at background times) went up 7-16kbps at all hours of the day with the extra traffic coming from the Echo's IP... too creepy.

Agreed. Valid concern or not, the idea of essentially having a 'listening device' in your house that always on and connected to the internet, ehhh.
I guess I'm too oldschool. Seems
like with all the people oversharing on facebook and everywhere else, that not as many people worry about 'privacy' anymore.

That said, I know thats not how the echo is being used, but just the 'idea' kind of bugs me.
Somehow we made it throough daily life in our homes just fine before virtual assistants, and its not like they make your life 'amazingly better'.

The Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap all have voice-activated assistant Alexa built in.

Unless I can say "Alexa, do my washing-up" or "Alexa, vacuum the floor" I just don't see the point of this.

If it's just to be able to say "Play this music track" or "what time is EastEnders on" I'll just stick to using the phone that's always in my pocket.

Always-on microphones freak me out, especially ones tied to a merchant that has every incentive to monetize that data it collects. No matter who it comes from, it's creepy. One of the first things I do now on Apple products is disable "Hey Siri."

For example, here's some creepy always-on microphones inside kids toys:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doll-records-children_us_5849c10ae4b0905b34427964
"The complaint alleges that the dolls My Friend Cayla and i-Que Intelligent Robot, which use speech-recognition software to have conversations with kids, are using this technology to record their personal information."
"The complaint claims that the dolls send the data to a separate company, Nuance Communications, which saves the recordings for future use. It also notes that Nuance, which also makes the dolls’ software, has contracts with military and law enforcement agencies."

I tried one out way back in the beginning... Completly underwhelmed.

It was better at voice recognition than Siri, but I didn't like that outbound traffic on my network (at background times) went up 7-16kbps at all hours of the day with the extra traffic coming from the Echo's IP... too creepy.