MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
My wife's never liked voice assistants. She doesn't see the point, and in its previous version Cortana couldn't be configured to deal with her non-UK accent on a UK phone. So she gave up and is constantly complaining about the pop ups and stuff, despite me telling her she can turn them off.
Just now she got up from the bed and accidentally pressed the button for it, when it bleeped ready to accept voice input. She said "oh Cortana, shut up!"
From her pocket Cortana replied "Oh yeah?"
We had a Mk4 estate, it was subject to many voice commands in the time we had it, mostly from my dad, can't recall it ever responding in a helpful way.
Siri on my iphone has become solely for my 6 year old daughter to ask it to rap, sing a song or tell her facts about Taylor Swift.
... can't recall it ever responding in a helpful way.
Much like today's voice assistants in cars...
I do use 'OK Google' on my phone and tablet quite a bit and have recenlty purchased a couple of Amazon Echo Dots
However, no one is every around when i do this as it's embarasing as **** but bloomin useful when your hands are busy cooking or getting ready
I was trying to turn my alarm clock off via Alexa the other day and in my semi-sleep grumbliness it wasn't understanding my commands
A slightly angry "Alexa go f*** yourself" wasn't met with the alarm being switched off funnily enough
I found myself using Cortana to open apps when alone. It's actually quite quick and easy.
I have however found that the 'try and get cortana to only respond to you' makes it far less reliable in use. For me, at least.
good work there avdave2
I have to admit being throughly annoyed at my iPhone today when the voice activation chimed, so I told it to 'f*** off' (I usually just 'cancel' & then check it's not phoning some-one) at which point the voice activation cancelled.. progress I believe! 
She's been quite useful in most of my battles against the Covenant.