Wes at Home - Play - Toys

I bought this on a whim because I'm a sucker for new technology. My Aibo is named "Gort" and he is the silver version. NOTE: "Silver" is a bit of a misnomer; the color is actually has a light blue cast.

I bought the recharging station and the Aibo Life software as well.
After shelling out the equivalent of a month's rent, it's disconcerting to find that Aibo (with the Aibo Life software) spends most of the day crying and laying down. It took about a month for Aibo to reach adulthood with daily play, and now it walks around the house singing to itself and playing with its ball. If I ignore it for too long, it gets mad and ignores me; if I play with it a lot, it gets happy and does cute tricks. (I realize this sounds like I'm completely crazy.) Anyway...

The voice recognition is great, although the manual strangely doesn't include all of the commands (there are many websites with this information, and I think Sony has finally posted it on clubaibo.com).

I don't really think this is a child's toy, mostly because it requires patience to "train." I also doubt it would survive a plunge in the bath if a kid wanted to "wash the doggy."

I've been tempted to buy the software and hardware that allows Aibo to read my email to me via a wireless LAN connection, but it still seems a little over the top.