I've had one for about six months and the only thing I use it for is as a Bluetooth speaker and as a five minute coffee timer. In fact, when I have friends over I ask them to try to get it to do anything because it's always hilariously bad.
Part of the problem is that it just doesn't do much. It can't seem to answer 9 out of 10 questions I ask it. It's very unstable and I get a flashing ring on top indicating that it needs a forceful reboot about twice a week. It doesn't seem to connect to anything in the outside world other than wikipedia. They did recently add calendar support but it can't read both my home and work calendar at the same time so it's not especially useful. It can't talk to my email, it can't send me emails, it can't look up movie times, it can't look up traffic, it can't price flights, it can't tell me when a book will be released. It has a built-in shopping list and todo list but they are only accessible from its (awful!) iOS app and don't do anything else. It can tell me the population of Florence, Italy. I learned from this thread today that it can do unit conversions. It can reply to some movie memes like "show me the money".
Part of the problem is discoverability. I don't know what it can do and in true hilariously bad form "what kind of cool stuff can you do?" just makes it reply "I don't understand the question"
So maybe you can answer here: what does it do? What cool things am I not doing with it that I should be doing? What am I missing out on? Is "show me the money" the best I can hope for?
I've got Philips Hue lighting in my house, so I use it frequently for that: "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights". It's particularly helpful because I have the voice remote in the bedroom, so I can do an "Alexa, turn off all the lights" before crashing and know that things are off. Home automation for me is the holy grail - If I could link Echo to something like Vera/MiCasaVerde or other full-home-control system (shouldn't be difficult, they have decent web APIs), the whole "Alexa, Time to watch Silicon Valley"-dim-the-lights-turn-on-the-tv-start-playing-my-show thing becomes a pretty easy reality.
I use the grocery function often and have IFTT linked to add stuff to ToDoist (agreed, the mobile app is horrible - who knew Amazon would make such a miserable shopping list app).
Lastly, living in the PNW, I do get a lot of mileage out of "Will it rain tomorrow?"
Granted, nothing I couldn't do with an iPhone/Android, but Echo's cheaper than a dedicated mobile device.
Part of the problem is that it just doesn't do much. It can't seem to answer 9 out of 10 questions I ask it. It's very unstable and I get a flashing ring on top indicating that it needs a forceful reboot about twice a week. It doesn't seem to connect to anything in the outside world other than wikipedia. They did recently add calendar support but it can't read both my home and work calendar at the same time so it's not especially useful. It can't talk to my email, it can't send me emails, it can't look up movie times, it can't look up traffic, it can't price flights, it can't tell me when a book will be released. It has a built-in shopping list and todo list but they are only accessible from its (awful!) iOS app and don't do anything else. It can tell me the population of Florence, Italy. I learned from this thread today that it can do unit conversions. It can reply to some movie memes like "show me the money".
Part of the problem is discoverability. I don't know what it can do and in true hilariously bad form "what kind of cool stuff can you do?" just makes it reply "I don't understand the question"
So maybe you can answer here: what does it do? What cool things am I not doing with it that I should be doing? What am I missing out on? Is "show me the money" the best I can hope for?