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It is funny how you can be at the cutting edge of technology in one aspect and back in the Dark Ages in others. Not that long ago I needed to start making voice recordings again. I got out my ancient Radio Shack cassette recorder. I am guessing it is 30 years old, and it last worked fine a couple of years ago. But it did not work.
So, off to the Internet to find a replacement. These days that means something with silicon memory. I looked at Buy.com, Amazon.com and a few other places. I read the comments by people who had already bought the products. I am budget-conscious, so even though this was a deductible business tool purchase, I sought something that would do the job well without extra costs that would not be productive for me. I ordered the Olympus WS300M.
I have not tried other voice recorders, but I have given the Olympus WS-300M a fair workout over the last 4 months. For me it is great. I have only had to replace the AAA battery once this whole time (although that might be partly because I don't use it to play back the recordings). The sessions I record typically run one to two hours. The fidelity of the recording is excellent. When I am done recording I pop off one end of the plastic case to expose the computer USB connection. I plug in the connnection. My computer sees the recorder as a drive. I move the recording over to my computer, which leaves the recorder blank and ready for another go. All this takes less than ten seconds. To listen to the recordings I just click on them and Windows MediaPlayer comes up. So I am building an archive of this important audio information with virtually no effort. I found the controls easy to use.
According the the sales pitch, the WS-300M has 256 MB of memory. It can play WMA and MP3 files; mine records to WMA, but it probably is possible to change the setting to MP3. It comes with headphones, which I don't use, but I sampled them and they seemed fine. Weight is under 2 ounces. Claims 68 hours of recording can be made, but can hold only 66 typical songs for playback.
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