ALEXA

[tommy dee]

just a quik queston, out of interest as I just had a meeting here

who here uses Alexa  ( or Siri) at home?  are you impressed?

cheers in advance

Tommy

[Stillearly]

I bought an Alexa speaker used it a couple of times .. now gathering dust ..

I've never used Siri on my phones 

[Yesitisdakid]

I use Alexa it's brilliant especially on my fire stick when doing searches. It definitely makes one lazier

[john1000]

All the time for streaming radio around the world, news, weather etc. Have also used for recipes and odd calculations.

 

[Butch]

Got 2 , my Dad has it for playing extended spotify music from the 60's. the wife uses it for playing wank tagalog music from any era as tagalog music is all wank, regardless of the timeframe. (Apart from Pinoy rock which is different).

I use it everyday for weather reports and high / low tide times which I can quickly note down within 30 sec rather than faff about at work looking for it on the intranet.

@tommy dee in reply:

Pro's

Accurate weather, Roadwork (but not up to date traffic) and information for stuff like sunrise, tides and wind speeds.

General questions can be easily answered without the need for a web search and faffing about with cookie permissions etc.

Good, up to date info on local attractions , restaurant suggestions and locations of petrol stations etc.

Great for listening to Music and news stations but it won't get Pattaya 103 News. Better still if you use Spotify for access to millions of tracks.

Con's

While locations are good, specifics are not. Alexa does not give updated details of delays, traffic (use Waze - best free app ever after BOLT) .

Somewhat insidious software which I personally don't trust. I unplug it when not in use as there have been conformed reports of it listening in and feeding back date.

Can't use it for anything complex like flight bookings, also no idea of the date it stores and sends.

Can't be used to find local slappers.

In summary:

A good resource for up to date info if you can't be bothered with a web search.

If you want music, then Youtube with an adblocker and simple search or use Brave browser is much better.

Overall, a thumbs down from me. My reasoning is that it aims to remove independence for convenience. So, it suggests and guides rather than allows you to specifically look, kind of a method of suggestion.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Butch

[Krapow]

My 7 year old uses it, can do stuff like 'Ring Santa'.

I have child 'controls' on it, nothing mad she can listen to, or even worse, may any purchases from Amazon for wherever 

[galenkia]

 

[gs joe]

Just got given one enjoy  daily quizzes

and playing music on it while I read only issue so far for me is finding a alexa accent the fits with my hearing

 

[Jambo]

10 hours ago, galenkia said:

 

Our Ford car could not understand Sai's Thai accent and she used to get really annoyed when she couldn't use the phone voice control.

It didn't work either for the Thai salesman at Ford's in Pattaya and I had to use it for him after he told me what to do.

I use Alexa for music but not much else. The sound bar I linked to my smart TV is brilliant.