Amazon today launched Prime Now one-hour delivery services throughout most of the Houston area.

Amazon Prime members now can get one-hour delivery of thousands of items via the Amazon website or an app. Prime Now is currently available in 15 cities.

The service is available from 8 a.m. to midnight daily, seven days a week, so those desperately needing a new book or a HMDI cable overnight will have to sit tight.

One-hour service costs users $7.99 per purchase. Two-hour service is free, so it pays to be patient it seems.

Amazon reps say that “tens of thousands” of items are available via Prime Now, each delivered by a team dedicated solely to deliveries.

According to Amazon, users can order anything from “books to Kindles to diapers,” and now even “big-screen TVs and AeroBed inflatable mattresses.”

Prime Now does offer a selection of frozen and chilled foods as well. Seattle's Prime Now service offers beer and alcohol but Cheeseman says that service will not be available in Houston.

If there is anything that a user thinks that Prime Now should carry, they can email the suggestion to the Amazon team with their request.

The one-hour Prime Now coverage area radiates generally north and west from downtown Houston (see map below.). Amazon spokesperson Kelly Cheeseman says that Houston's delivery area will be greatly expanded soon.

Amazon Prime Now One-Hour Delivery Areas (story continues below ...)

Cheeseman said Thursday that the service has been a hit with parents in other cities who can’t leave the house with kids but still need essential items like diapers and wipes.

Amazon's Houston center is located near Humble, but the area is not serviced by Prime Now yet. Cheeseman says that that will change soon. Amazon also has Texas fulfillment centers in the Austin and Dallas areas which service Prime Now orders in those areas.

Two Houstonians tried out the new service on Thursday just after Prime Now was launched.

Trish Badger, a local photographer and Amazon Prime customer, used it to buy a few items for her pantry. She downloaded the app onto her phone and placed an order that was at her home within three hours. She didn’t opt for the one-hour service. She was able to track her order from the fulfillment center to her home.

“I got an alert when it was on the way, so I tracked it and it was just a few miles away,” Badger says. “Even though the driver had trouble finding my place, the experience was awesome and kind of mind-blowing.”

New dad Ramon Robles, a program director at iHeart Radio in Houston, anticipates that he and his wife will be using it in the future for baby items for their newborn son, like diapers and baby wipes.

“I was very happy to discover I was in the zip code of service. It’s not quite ‘Star Trek’ transporter future, but I would imagine having the same reaction,” Robles says. He used it to order chips and salsa to his Heights home on Thursday.