I bought a 3rd generation Echo over the holidays because it was on sale. Though, I thought it would help me learn how to build an Alexa skill. I do not, however, feel comfortable about how it's listening all the time (when plugged in) and that it is not really a smart speaker at all. Nor how you can't connect Alexa units that belong to separate households of the same family.
It's sad to say that most of the 85,000 skills that Alexa now knows how to do, thanks to Amazon's holiday contest push for new skill submission, are one trick ponies.. that is to say, you ask Alexa to open <whatever> skill and it performs a single task (e.g., reads you news headlines, perform basic math but not compound algebra calculations, tells you what a single stock price is and not how your portfolio is performing). Boring.
From where we were with voice activated desktop computer commands to this incarnation of Alexa skills, we have gone backwards into the Dark Ages of technology potential. Thirty years ago we could already tell a computer to do one task skills (open a program, play music, open a website, play a game). Now Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have unleashed what used to be in the domain of a software developer to anyone with the time and patience to read, write, and experiment.
Smart device? No, not really. My Alexa is still dumb as a brick.
