What's the best camera/video recorder for me?

Whats a good digital voice recorder to take personal notes?

• Hi, I am a guy that forgets allot of good things I come up with and I am not really organized when it comes to written material. I need a digital voice recorder that has an internal battery, can connect to the computer and transfer the recordings easily. Also it's important that the operation will be very simple just click the button once to start recording and again to stop or continuous press to record. I've heard people use MP3 players but I'm not sure about navigating all the way to the recorder every time I have a thought. Again this isn't to record lectures and the like but to record short quick thoughts, Ideas, Or notes. Thanks in advance, Neal.

• Answer:

  When you say you want to connect to your computer, what is your intention? If you want to copy the audio file to your computer for archival or reference purposes, that's one thing, but if you want to process it through software like Dragon Naturally Speaking to change it into computer text, that's another. Most voice recorders are not meant to transfer audio files to a computer - they just record your notes and then play them back. They do have a headphone jack that can be connected to your computer's audio line in jack, but that only copies at normal playback speed, and won't give you the best possible quality. Further, if you want to save the input as an MP3 (for example), you may need recording/editing software. If you want automatic transcription to text, it becomes even more difficult. Transcription software is notoriously inaccurate, needs to be "trained" to recognize your speech, and doesn't like the "ums" and "ahs" that we all tend to use when we're trying to organize our thoughts. In fact, you may find it's just as efficient to use a cheap audio recorder and then transcribe the notes manually later on.