Olympus DS 2300 Digital Voice Recorder Review

Do not repeat, do not buy this product. I bought it late last year and a month later when I tried to download the file I got the message "Memory card is corrupted, contact your Olympus dealer" on my computer. I had to deal with this by having an outside transcriptionist listen and print my files. I liked my previous recorder from Olympus a few years ago and thought I'd give this one another try so I ordered a new one. Now, after a little over a month, I'm getting the SAME MESSAGE! I have an…

I would recommend this product to anyone who dictates a lot and travels. The device is very small and light. You don't need any special hardware other than the device itself or software for your computer to listen and play the recordings. It records audio with excellent quality and I can email the voice data to my transcription assistant from anywhere I have internet access. I would recommend buying two USB cables, one for your briefcase and one for your assistant in case you lose one from your

I bought the DS-2300 on August 1st, 2006. It works great and I like it BUT it doesn't recognize newer memory cards. And the Olympus customer service center can be tricky to navigate (although some representatives are very knowledgeable and helpful). An M or H format card simply will not work on the DS-2300 without a firmware update. You have two options: 1) send the device to Olympus (at your expense) and they will update the firmware for free and send it back within a week or two; or 2)…

It took me a while to get used to the controls. The usefulness of index markers only became apparent when I was recording longer sessions. Index markers let you jump to a section of a recording just as quickly as you jump from one file to another. Likewise, I didn't really understand fast forward and rewind until I worked on longer shots. After a few days I found that the controls were intuitive and easy to use. The automatic volume control works well: I found I could hear all speakers clearly…