I've been fiddling around writing a novel for a while but I'm beginning to find that I get a lot of my best ideas when I can't use my laptop, so I was looking around on the internet for a digital audio recorder that I could use for recording my ideas but I can't find anything that really fits what I need. It has to be easily downloadable to my laptop and not terribly expensive. I wondered if anyone uses one of these and could recommend one.
I can totally recommend the Olympus Digital Voice recorder WS-200S (link) - it's got excellent quality, about 4 hours of recording time, long battery life, and best of all it's also a memory stick you can plug straight into your PC and download the recordings as WMA-readable files (assuming you have MS 2000 or later).
It's about £70 in Dixons though, so maybe too expensive for you?
I recommend Audacity too. It needs an extra plug-in to export in MP3 format, but it sounds like you might not need that.
Another free one with a much simpler interface is Hi-Q, from here; the free version records directly to MP3 (only). I haven't used this one yet, but I plan to compare and contrast with Audacity soon for a project.
Oh, and my last FM radio / Memory stick / MP3 player device would also voice record, like the one Whisky Priestess mentioned. I can't track it down now, but it was similar to this, that you pulled apart, and it became a USB memory stick. Currently my mobile phone does the same - I suspect most modern ones do!
Matt Shepherd: "Why do you need to transfer what you record to your laptop? "
Hmm, well, security blanket, I suppose? I put everything onto my laptop, then copy it to a one of my many usb keys. Ha, ha, this makes me sound demented...
