Customer Reviews
Neat little device; some problems
I give this 3.5 stars.
This is a very innovative recording device, with many unexpected amenities. It has 3 main folders (A,B,C), with a 4th "calendar" (S) that has 10 subfolders for each month. Pefect for keeping business notes on A, grocery list on B, etc.
The record quality is terrific, playback is great, and the mic & earphone jacks are excellent. I have a voice record function on my MP3 player, but this works much better. And I believe the 32 meg unit will record over 40 hours of notes.
I like that it runs on common AAA batteries, and they last much longer than you'd think. All that being said, it does have several design problems. It's a light, small unit - but it could be smaller. I've read that the engineers intentionally make them larger than they need to be (a) so they don't seem brittle or fragile, and (b) so we feel better about our purchase.
I also agree with most of the complaints in these reviews, except that it really is easy to erase messages.
To answer Miss Mae: rewind to the beginning of the message by hitting the << arrow; rewind incrementally by holding it down (just like on most DVD players).
My question: How do you turn it off? A dumb question, which indicates another design problem. It turns off automatically after a certain amount of time, but there is no ON-OFF switch, and the instruction manual is no help.
Difficulty in transcribing
Can someone tell me how to backspace just a sentence or two? When ever I press the back button in the S folder, it goes all the way back to the beginning of the taped meeting. I am trying to transcribe notes from the meeting and want to go back only a sentence or two to repeat what I heard. Can anyone help me with this?
Does exactly what is says it will do.
This is an easy to use device, despite what another reviewer wrote. It takes about one hour to master all its features, and then it is simple to use. I use it to record the Art Bell show, by placing it near the radio speaker and letting it go the full four hours. There is a bigger memory model, the 480, which will turn itself on, as well. I use the 240 in the "vox" mode, and it starts recording when my clock radio turns on at 10pm. All I have to remember, however, is to turn the radio "on" within an hour, or the alarm will shut off the radio after an hour. It works fine, and I get a very nice four hour recording of the talk radio show and I can index it, and skip all the commercials and news breaks. It does, however, use a set of AAA's after being on for about 20 hours, so get a set of NiCads for it. It is the best cheapest way to record talk radio. As far as recording live people, that would be a piece of cake. It has all these folders and subfolders, which I don't need, but maybe you do. Bottom line, get one if you want to record voices. Not at all good for music, however. The freq response is not there. The LP mode is fine, it just has a very slight amount of noise in the badground. I don't use the HQ modes, but they are better. I love it, I got mine real real cheap.
