From what I read on the webpage it seems that you can only place amazon orders firstly if you setup one click payments on amazon itself, and secondly if you buy Amazon prime.
Sorry, but the idea of paying a monthly fee for the privilige of being ablen to buy items just seems utterly wrong to me, so I have no fears of that happening .

On the pluss side, I have used one of the todo lists and I did see a shoping skill that lets you buy from a Morrisons, which is our local  supermarket, so that could be handy assuming it isn't overly expensive or complex to setup.

Amusingly enough all the smart home stuff that should theoretically be useful seemed to take quite a lot of setting up when we looked at buying a smart washing machine, and as I said amazon music options seem no good at all, though at least I have worked out how to download the mp3 files if I buy stuff from amazon themselves rather than using the echo, so that is okay.

On the plus side, I have also setup a couple of  games including six swords and dungeon adventure, I actually like games with the speech control, particularly the rpg ones, so that is pretty good.

To be honest I've steered clear of the music as I had so little luck actually getting the thing to play anything interesting, last time as most of what it had seemed based on the top 40 etc. besides I'm one of these old fashioned people who believes that if you buy something it should be yours! to play on whatever device you choose.
did buy first a cd, then when I worked out how to do it an mp3 download, but I'd rather buy than stream given that Mrs. Dark and I have rather more specific interests musically speaking.

Streaming films or tv series might be nice though, though it's something I'd only look into when i've run out of stuff to watch on disk which at the moment I  haven't, plus of course using vlc one does have the advantage of completely accessible dvd controls.

I'm not against the idea of prime, but since I'm trying to save money at the moment it'd have to be pretty exceptional for me to want to invest in the thing.

At the moment most of the things I've got the echo to do have been moderately superficial like playing games, , though i will admit I do like the ability to listen to the news on it, since as Mrs. Dark and I don't have a tv, we often do miss the longer national news reports you get on bbc tv.

On the games front however there are some pretty interesting ones out there, I do rather like six swords now I've located it, and there is a fairly amusing little game entitled yes sire, plus as Mrs. Dark is a huge fan of trivia games that could be handy.

still if anyone has any suggestions for stuff we can do with the thing I'm always up to try things out.

on the skills portion, you'll need to say activate "skillname" to use a skill for the first time, it will be a local skill from then on. For example, you can play Code Signus on the Echo, but it isn't a local skill until you say "allexxa, activate Codename Signus." for the first time.

I personally like "Jeopardy" which unlike the mobile versions is accessible but short, with 6 clues for each day if you don't have prime or 12 if you do with only one play per day and only on weekdays since it is based on the broadcast for that day.

Yep Sam I played Fidgit spinner, it's an amusing one, check out my Alexa games list in the articles room  all of the things I've tried, well all of the games anyway .