Amazon Echo: Master Your Amazon Echo; User Guide and Manual Paperback – June 12, 2015

Um... BEYOND happy. Couldn't buy another one of these for my DAD, so I just drove out to South Compton to get one. Yikes! Came back with only part of my grill still on! What??? Anyway, this is quite the little robot. I tell her to set timers for me so I don't lose my Ebay auctions. I ask her to wikipedia historical events. I tell her, "Alexa, put toothpaste on my shopping list" "Play some disco funk" "Turn it UP!" "Play 95.5 KLOS (Heidi and Frank local talk show)" and she DOES it! I take a cat nap and I tell her "Alexa, wake me up in 45 minutes". She does it! I'm so happy with it. I try to set alarms on my phone when I am tired and I don't wake up till the next day!I can buy a special coffee pot of light bulb and she can operate them too. My home automation is fairly sophisticated already so I don't think I will need her for any of that but she is going to learn a lot. Sky is the limit on what they can do with this little personal assistant. It's not even available yet really. I feel lucky to have her and I hope she will soon be a great TV guide who can record my shows. Doubtful but maybe if everybody can play nice together.

I purchased “Amazon Echo: Master Your Amazon Echo; User Guide and Manual because I wanted more detailed information about my wife’s new Echo device than the rather sparse manual that came with it provided. This is actually a very useful little book. Author Andrew McKinnon provides a lot of interesting information about the Amazon Echo and gives many helpful tips on getting the most out of it. I especially like the list of Echo’s “Easter eggs” that McKinnon provides in the last chapter.McKinnon writes in a friendly, casual style that is easy to understand. The book is short – perhaps 75 pages at most. I finished it in less than an hour.This book is essential if you own an Amazon Echo (with built-in speaker system). It will definitely help you get more out of this amazing device. Recommended.

We were very excited to get this during one of the pre-Xmas sales and started using it immediately. It connected to our home wi-fi flawlessly, and the setup for my laptop and phone was just as easy. We love the music feature but many of our Tunes were bought from iTunes and are not compatible. (We are searching for software to convert those.) The songs it does have are really good and it's amazing how great they sound coming out of something that looks like a Pringles Can. The daily news briefing is nice but only NPR. We got an email telling us that we can also get Huffington Post and CNN but neither has ever worked for us.New features are added on a fairly regular basis; the features are called Skills, and you can choose from among many of them by going online to the site and browsing and choosing. You also get periodic emails telling you about the new Skills which is great, but we have tried some of them, like the Huffington Post skill several times but it doesn't work for us. I initially saw a CNN skill but it seems to have disappeared; didn't work anyway. Most of the skills don't really interest me, but I still look through them each time I get the email...hey, you never know!As far as its knowledge base, I have asked it many questions about various topics but about 75% of the time it doesn't know the answer either even when I phase the question multiple ways, which is a little disappointing. On a happier note, asking it to tell you a joke is fun; most of the jokes are corny, but some are hilarious. I have asked it for political jokes about the current gaggle of Presidential candidates, but only a few seem to be working correctly, or have jokes available.One of the skills that I use a lot is the Shopping List skill. Those at home can tell it to add something to the shopping list, and before I leave work I can bring the list up and pick up things on my way home. When I'm home I can compose the shopping list by perusing the cabinets and telling Echo what to add to the list; very handy.Although the Echo has some practical applications, I still see it as an interesting toy, but I think over time as new skills emerge I will find it more useful.

The Echo is easy to set up and use and I was fine without the book. However I love the Echo so much that I bought several as Christmas presents and just knew that my tech challenged parents would be calling me every 2 minutes asking for help. I would than become frustrated by their questions and the Echo would sit unused. So I bought the Master Your Echo book and gave with the actual Echo. Explained to my parents that I would not be helping them and to read the book. Guess what the book was a simple instructional aid and both parents love the Echo and now know more than I do on different apps and features. If you are a tech challenged person or would like further details on what your Echo can do this is a great book. I look it this way if you get a smart phone and can figure out the apps and functions on your own skip the book but if you get a smart phone and curse it for being too complicated than you will get a lot of use out of the book.