On a fast broadband connection the delay whilst Alexa sends my speech audio to Amazon , interprets it , and then returns an audio response is is pretty low perhaps better than Cortana at least on W 10 M . So you should probably expect performance similar to what you ' re used to . Can ' t say it wouldn ' t drive me nuts though ! I think you should buy an Echo Do . Right now they ' re really cheap in the Black Friday sale cheap enough to buy one just to try out . Worst case scenario is you ' ve bought a $ 40 handsfree kitchen timer that you ' ll use occasionally to check the weather etc . Most of the main functionality will be kind of pointless for you it ' s basically a music streamer that also interfaces with smart home tech and you ' ll use it for neither . There are things that it should do like searching the internet that are so limited that they ' re more of a bonus when they work than something you ' ll ever rely on . But with a few functions that you might find useful and the sheer awesomeness of having a ' computer ' you can talk to in your kitchen then at $ 40 the Dot is cheap enough to buy just as a toy to play with . I use mine all the time just for reading the news to me as I do the dishes , setting timers as I ' m cooking , and getting weather forecasts I don ' t really need it for any of these , but it ' s convenient and I like it a lot . As others have said , don ' t expect it for now to give you reminders etc . Echo can ' t currently do that .