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Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

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Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#161

Post by VLM »

hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

No one else mentioned my $500 phone has trash speakers compared to my $90 (or whatever I paid for it on sale) echo? I wouldn't want my phone to be as big and heavy as the echo, but I certainly enjoy listening to it.

Also binary thinking, people in the ankle bracelet tribe literally cannot comprehend people who don't carry their phone with them everywhere 24x7 and vice versa, and echo is incredibly useful to members of the non-ankle bracelet tribe.

(ankle bracelet as in giant house arrest GPS tracker thingie, not shiny gold high fashion)

I have another interesting problem in that I have a newer phone that uses huge amounts of power to do the simplest things, and aftermarket wireless Qi charger, and Qi only provides USB1.0 slow charging rates of power, so even with my phone laying on the charger (s, I have multiple chargers) the battery slowly dies if I play music or podcasts or anything, whereas the echo is ac powered and I don't feel like I threw out $1 into the battery replacement fund every time I charge it because the echo is always plugged in. It feels cheaper to use the echo, less hassle. I can afford to replace my phone battery but its a huge inconvenient PITA.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#162

Post by Declanomous »

croon wrote: post #149
bcook wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the RT-AC87U is known to have a buggy Quantenna WiFi chip, especially the 5ghz. There are many reports of problems over on snbforums. The RT-AC68U or RT-AC88U are better choices (because they use Broadcom?). My RT-N66U has been a flawless AP for years.

Interesting, I'll have to investigate this, I've had other Asus in the past, but not those two versions. I'll have to check the chips on the ones I've had. Thank you for the tip!

You might also be interested in the Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi APs. They are access points, so you still need a router and a switch. I got a Unifi AP AC Lite recently, and it's probably the best AP I've ever used, behind perhaps only the Apple ones.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#164

Post by fps »

croon wrote: post #157
fps wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those uses. This includes: a dedicated network router and dedica…

A lot of good points here. But your opening statement... > Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those…

Regarding the first and last statements contradicting, I mean that when my family uses the network in the ways I have anticipated and built around, it works consistently and without interruption. This is different than saying it just works for everyone and anything they want to do. I think "just works for everyone doing anything" is what people want, and expect when they spend hundreds of dollars on a product, but I don't believe that's possible when you're dealing with the current state of the art in computer wireless networks. You need to take into account the environment and the requirements.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#165

Post by untog »

matwood wrote: post #134
croon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now,…

> I have never been on or even heard of a wifi network that always works. Years ago I had this problem and bought an Apple router. My wifi has always 'just worked' ever since. There was an entire thread of people on here on HN saying the same thing when Apple decided to stop making them. Wifi, like cell, is very anecdotal because of things out of your control.

FWIW, I switched from an Apple router to a Google OnHub one, and it also works absolutely seamlessly. Tried a cheaper Netgear one inbetween and it was a nightmare. Sometimes it's better to just pay a little bit more money.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#166

Post by fps »

croon wrote: post #157
fps wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those uses. This includes: a dedicated network router and dedica…

A lot of good points here. But your opening statement... > Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those…

Also, yes, replacing wireless links with cat6 where possible is certainly the more reliable solution. Fixed location high bandwidth devices shouldn't be using wireless if it can be avoided at all.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#167

Post by matwood »

croon wrote: post #147
matwood wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have never been on or even heard of a wifi network that always works. Years ago I had this problem and bought an Apple router. My wifi has always 'just worked' ever since. There was an entire thread of people on here on HN saying the same thing when Apple decided to stop making them. Wifi, like cell, is very anecdotal because of things out of your control.

I've had Apple routers as well. While above average, and not requiring restarts, it wasn't better than other premium (consumer grade) routers I've had. Of course, anecdata, but just for clarification: Are you saying you never have any wifi issues? Even every other month? I think the OP question touched on problems existing, but small enough for many to "accept them" as status quo, and him/her questioning if he/she wa…

> Are you saying you never have any wifi issues? Even every other month?

Correct. It just works. The base station I have is also really old at this point. It is the larger flat one without simultaneous 5g bought ~2008. I bought it after I went through some of the other cheaper options that would cause my VPN to drop randomly throughout the day.

I want to upgrade to something with the newer standards and more speed, but I'm worried about going back to an unstable connection. I've been thinking about either the Netgear R6400 or the Google wifi 3 pack.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#168

Post by sikim »

matwood wrote: post #135
hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

> what are people actually using these for? Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner: * "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list" * "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice" * "hey google, play some Christmas music" * "hey google, how much time is left on the rice" I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my h…

I believe from iPhone 6S and above, there's an option to just say "Hey, Siri" to activate Siri without having to touch the phone, so you can basically do the same thing with iPhones.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#169

Post by dx034 »

homerguy69 wrote: post #155

I think this years re:invent was a big factor to the supply as well. Everyone who attended was given one.

I'm not sure. Guess only a few thousand people attended? As it's on the front page of Amazon for a while, they probably sold a few million of those now. I know quite a few people here (UK) who got one, it seems very popular at the lower price.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#170

Post by icebraining »

petra wrote: post #111
m_t wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then we can definitely trust them.

If they lie about this in general(and enable blanket surveillance), it would be relatively easy to detect , and hurt Amazon's brand.

How? If you say "by analysing the amount of data it transmits when not in use", then not really - they could record it locally and then sneak it alongside a normal request.
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