I would have taken the same approach as you if it had not been for my tech son who gave one to my husband as a Father's Day gift. I find it is worth the $50 price tag. I do not use the Echo Dot as much as others but the voice command for light in my sitting room and bedroom is a plus.

DS has the video camera to watch his cats when on vacation. Fun feature.

I am relatively old so I am slow to learn new technology or see the need for new products on the market. I remember not really caring about e-readers. Now I love my kindle.

My adult children are pulling me along and I love how happy they are to think they are enriching my increasingly limiting world.

So I am now pulling NT MSers into my new lifestyle!

And...hi ewi!

I do have to say while I love my ipads, smart phones, and computers, I wasn't too sure about getting the echo dots till they were talked about on the boards here... now that I have mine... I LOVE them. The DH got our new thermostat installed (since he works in HVAC, that was kind of an easy no brainer replacement), but we also just got 2 rooms set up tonight with the phillips hue lights! We went for the color one, just for the bedroom and living room, and it is brilliant. The voice activation is simple enough, rather reminiscent of the old fashion clappers, but that we can change the color, and brightness of the lights with just a few short words is really cool and handy(or handless as the case may be). As any one else who has migraines I'm sure can well imagine.

I just wish I could simply tell it to set the lighting to migraine mode, but for that I'll need to pull out my phone and hit the setting button through the app, at least for now, though at least now I will no longer be forced to choose between mind-numbing, stomach twisting, dizzying pain, or falling/stubbing toes and/or stumbling around in the dark when I have a killer migraine, I can simply set the bulbs to produce the least offense and perhaps even a little bit soothing color of light in my choice of brightness too.