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Monday, November 6th, 2017 01:45 pm
Latest news is that I bought an Amazon Echo Plus – the one they’ve been pushing on TV – and it’s a very impressive item of kit. I went to visit a friend in Sunderland and saw hers in use, and was fascinated, so much so that I thought, “I’ve got to have one of those!” I wasn’t impressed with the thing on the adverts as they had it doing things I would never have any use for.

At the moment I use it as a music system. Setting it up to see my music was mildly irritating and not free. I had to buy the Amazon version of the iCloud and upload all my music to their cloud, then set up playlists. Setting up playlists wasn’t too bad as I could use my iPad to do that and could therefore relax while choosing tracks for the playlists.

You also use an iPad (or similar, other tablets exist) to set up the Echo itself, and I currently have one light bulb that I can control with my voice which came free with the Echo.

I’m told that I can also use it to control Plex, my video server. I’ll be playing with that this afternoon, to see if what they’ve said is true.

My only minor whinge (and it is very minor) is that if I have my TV playing, the sound on the TV can interfere with Echo’s microphones. You’d expect that, but it is irritating. I found that if I want to ask Alexa the time, I have to pause my TV programme.

So yes, a worthwhile investment, which will get better.
Monday, November 6th, 2017 07:59 pm (UTC)
A friend just got a new Echo, and gave me her old one. I'm currently using Amazon's free 30-day programme, but I'll probably buy the cloud for my own music rather than pay to continue using Amazon's choice of music (though it's only playing what I tell it so).