Your Amazon Echo Could Take More Than 4 Months to Arrive
We admit: The thought of owning an Amazon-based robot that could fulfill all our digital needs intrigued us from day one. But after receiving an invitation to buy an Echo this past weekend, our hopes of owning Amazon's wonder bot have been deflated. Upon adding the Echo to our shopping cart, we realized that the estimated delivery date for this gizmo is well over four months away. To be precise, our estimated delivery date is between May 27 and July 2.
Amazon cites "high demand" as the reason behind the delay, but it also conveniently reminds us that our invite to buy Echo is only valid for seven days. Moreover, customers can only purchase one Echo per account. By comparison, Amazon let select customers use its Fire TV streamer for 30 days free of charge, when it was first announced.
We're curious to know though how the Echo-buying experience has been for other customers. Readers who have attempted to buy an Echo, how long did it take for you to receive an invite? How long was the ship time, and if you purchased, how long did the delivery actually take? Would you wait four or more months for your device to ship, or would you rather just wait for Echo 2.0?

Almost 6 months.
Joking aside, 'smart home' is the next big thing
My ship date is February 23.
My buddy, opened his invitation January 9, his ship date is mid April.
What a difference a few hours between orders made.
The kids get a kick out of it and the voice recognition works quite well. I think it's a good deal at $99 but should probably retail for $149 with it's current level of usability. It will be handy to stream ambient music and do shopping list updates. It is easily managed from the web so you can setup radio stations and retrieve lists. I wish it had native Pandora instead of iHeartRadio but it can stream Pandora over Bluetooth but that seems like an pain. I don't see any need for the remote.
Also packing some heat is my new Guy Fieri's "Ghee Fieri" Cooking Butter, comin' atcha hot and heavy in 2015. Total flavortown for only $9.99 per bucket. I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, but that deal screams All Star to me.
My timeline:
November 6: Sent a request for an invite.
December 26: Received a notification that my invite was expiring after one week (apparently, the original invitation ended up in another filtered mailbox). Placed an order that day.
December 27: Echo shipped. Guessing it arrived on the projected delivery date of 12/29. (I was away from home for a bit.)
I'm going to chalk this up to dumb luck for Alison.