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Comment by danesparza | Hacker News Reader

There is something delightfully ballsy about making this only available to users of Alexa Voice shopping:

"Echo Dot is available in limited quantities and exclusively for Prime members through Alexa Voice Shopping. To order your Echo Dot, use your Amazon Echo or Amazon Fire TV and just ask: "Alexa, order an Echo dot"

Also, this makes me sad. I'd kind of like to try this out, but I have no Alexa voice service currently (I don't think)

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Even though I own an echo, I wanted to get in early. Here's a link until they remove it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00VKTZFB4/

That link still works for ordering :)

I don't imagine it will be like that forever. It's just a clever way to limit demand until they can ramp up manufacturing, or work out the bugs, or whatever their motivation is for keeping it in a limited release for now.

... and also a way to introduce the concept of shopping via Alexa (I would imagine one of AMZN's primary long term goals for the project)

Actually you can already shop via Echo/Alexa today. It's effectively limited to reorders and music for now.

I think it needs a base Amazon echo to work if I understand correctly.

No, it needs external speakers, unlike the original Echo. However, you only need an Echo to preorder a Dot, you don't need an Echo for a Dot to work.

FTA: Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own

Built in speaker is for alarms, not media, I think.

it does seem to exclude media.

> Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers > Includes a built-in speaker so it can work on its own as a smart alarm clock in the bedroom, an assistant in the kitchen, or anywhere you might want a voice-controlled computer

That's crazy, why do I want this without a speaker? The bluetooth speakers they recommend are all really expensive; a speaker + Echo Dot is more expensive than a regular Echo... why wouldn't I just get a second Echo?

You can plug it into a hifi system.

The speaker is for voice feedback only. Doesn't actually support music, news, audiobooks etc.

Do you have a source for that? I have an Echo in my living room, but I was thinking of picking up one of these for my bedroom. I don't really care about sound quality as I would just be using it for Philips Hue, weather, and news.

Sure, this was the link that was emailed to me from Amazon, which also included the following text:

> With its built-in speaker, you can place Dot in the bedroom and use it as a smart alarm clock that can also turn off your lights, or use Dot in the kitchen to easily set timers and add items to your shopping list using just your voice

http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14047587011&ref_=pe_184...

See the technical details:

> Built-in speaker for voice feedback when not connected to external speakers

My Echo news is a mix of Text2Speech and audio, so I'm not sure that it would work for News.

man that would suck. the computing internals of the echo are less impressive than a raspberry pi -0. The dot has bluetooth and apparently wifi to communicate with speakers and network devices. The real benefit of the echo over other homemade voice command devices like jasper(github.com/jasperproject) is the more proprietary far-field speaker array.

> The real benefit of the echo over other homemade voice command devices like jasper(github.com/jasperproject) is the more proprietary far-field speaker array.

Um, and the insane underlying voice API?

No it doesn't

I guess it's time to order an Echo.

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