Olympus WS-110 WMA Digital Voice Recorder

Overall good product. Nice and compact. I use it for college lectures, and it picks up good sound quality from the middle of the room. I also like the 1.5x and the .75x playback optons that speed it up or slow it down w/o distortion. Easy plug-and-play pc connectivity.
Improvements I would like to see: The battery life is short and the battery level indicator shows a full charge even when it's about to die.
Also, the files are not labled by date or time when you transfer them to your pc - only by folder. With multiple files in a folder it's hard to know what file is what recording utnil you play them all.

This gizmo was recommended to me as highly reliable and compatible with Linux. It does record. And the volume is okay. But, the device drains batteries like nothing I've seen in a long long while. To preserve power, you can't merely turn the machine off. You need to take the battery out.
That is a pain in the neck. In short, I'm still looking for the perfect digital recorder. This isn't it.

I bought the Olympus WS-110 mainly so I could record my college lectures. I previously own a microcassette player, but I just got fed up with the cassette tapes and its limited capacity.

Anyways, I thought this little hardware little great. Like everyone mention in the other reviews: it's small, light, sturdy, and has a pretty decent audio quality.

The only problem I had with the Olympus WS-110 is the fact that it wasn't simple as I thought it would be, or "no manual reading required." But I had to resort to reading the manual for simple tasks such as turning on and off the digital voice recorder. But after 10 minutes of using this recorder I felt really comfortable with it.

The only thing I have left to say is, Olympus WS-100 does what it was made to do, record and playback audio, its not an MP3 player, it was never meant to be one. But if you do own an Olympus WS-110, and what music you pretty much have to convert your audio files into WMA. You can do so with this converter software:
http://www.download.com/Free-Mp3-Wma-Converter/3000-2140_4-10442362.html

(Note:I personally think its worth the trouble of installing this software. But just be careful, during installation you will be ask to install other unnecessary softwares such as a toolbar, and set yahoo as your homepage, just decline them all.)

I bought the Olympus WS-110 WMA Digital Voice Recorder after researching quite a few brands and models (on Amazon and elsewhere). As I've used the device for about 3 hours only (since I got it yesterday), my feedback here will probably be revised after a few days' use.

Pros:

1. Ideal size - lightweight; not heavy/bulky like most microtape recorders
2. Simple and intuitive user interface - the buttons are sized correctly and the on-screen prompts are useful
3. Quality of recording at the highest quality is simply superb. I am still amazed at the high quality of audio.
4. Connectivity to the PC is straightforward (through the USB port) and finding the file within the folder structure is effortless.
5. The price I paid ($60 + free shipping) makes this device a fabulous buy.
6. The in-built speaker is quite good considering its size

Cons:

1. File format is limited to WMA/Windows Media instead of mp3 or a more Microsoft-independent format; I knew about this limitation when I bought the device but figured I could live with this limitation.
2. In-built mike is supersensitive (this is a disadvantage if the device is being used in an environment with substantial background noises). For my purposes, the sensitivity is welcome as I am currently using the device in environments with minimal background noise. I don't plan on buying a noise-cancelling mike as it might not be necessary.

Overall - I would rate this voice recorder as a 4.5/5.0. It loses 0.5 points for being too MicroSoft-specific (WMA) as opposed to using a non-proprietory format.

Will edit this review (if possible) after using the device for a few more days.

A buyer needs to know that this is just a recorder and not suitable for dictation use. The device is slim, light, but just the right weight to feel right in your hand. The USB connector is a great idea. All audio files generated are accessible as a USB drive that you plug into your computer.

The way the controls work is that when you press the "rec" button a new file is created that stores the audio. You can pause recording and restart by pressing the "rec" button to keep recording in the same file. If you press stop the file cannot have anything else added to it. What you cannot do is to pause the recording then listen to the recording to see where you were in your dictation. If you want to listen you have to press stop then play the file. You cannot add to the end of a file.

For recording discussions, music, events, or interviews it is fine. Good audio quality and low price. However, for dictation it is not appropriate. I returned the unit after purchase (at Office Depot) due to the limitations. Olympus has dictation appropriate recorders, but these are quite expensive. I'll be looking at the Sony brand dictation recorders to see if what I need is available there.