Extremely clear recording, reliable memory cards, easy to use
Disadvantages:
Not cheap, no rechargable battery or docking station
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
For the past 20 years, I've worked for a boss who is a dictater. Yes, I spelt that wrong on purpose. You see, I certainly wouldn't willingly stay working with a horrid, mean boss for all these years - I'm no masochist, I assure you. It's just that my boss likes to dictate his correspondence - hence, he is a 'dictater'. Over the years we've gone through dozens of dictation machines and transcribers - all of which were dependent on micro-cassettes. But the world moves on, and our office finally entered the digital age when we purchased a Philips Digital Pocket Memo.
The Philips Digital Pocket Memo (or DPM) is a small, hand-held machine that records my boss' eloquence on to files on memory cards. You then download files onto your computer to transcribe them. It's that simple. Still, that might not be enough for most of you so let me go into a touch more detail.
As you can see from the picture above, this has a LCD screen which shows you things like how much battery life you have left, the speed you're recording at, the date and/or time and how long (in time) the file is you're presently recording. It also shows you the total amount you've recorded on the memory card and what number the file is that you're recording and is also where you'll see the menu for making setup adjustments. While I had some problem with figuring out these menus to begin with, the quick instruction manual helps a whole lot and after that first time, it was very easy to figure out.
The Philips DPM uses SD flash memory cards, and it comes with a Philips 512mb card, but you can up in cards up to 1 GB (but no bigger). We don't have a docking station for this, and run it on two AAA batteries, and find that we only change batteries every two weeks or so. We figured that's over 30 hours of recording between battery changes, which is very good. Also, the sound quality stays consistently clear until the batteries go dead and then the DPM just stops recording altogether. Because it uses AAA batteries, it's not heavy or bulky to hold and is the sleekest of the ones that use memory cards. Those that have only internal memory are generally smaller and cheaper than this one.
I have to mention that digital sound is worlds better than analogue sound. There is no reduction in sound quality whatsoever from file #1 to file #1000 and beyond. My boss sounds exactly as he does when I hear him recording, as he does on the files. This may also be because the internal microphone is good. Of course, this isn't an MP3 player, but still, there's just no comparison - the digital sound quality beats the micro-cassettes hands down.
As for downloading and transcribing you can either you can hook the DPM up via (provided) USB cable to your computer and hit download, or you can remove the SD memory disk and download it via a card reader. The DPM comes with a CD-ROM of software that will help your computer recognize the DSS files. All you really need which isn't provided is a set of speakers that have a socket for headphones, and - if you're going to be typing a whole lot, I'd suggest getting a foot pedal for transcription.
To sum, the plusses of this machine are: superb and consistent sound quality; great battery life; easy to use; compact files; uses SD memory cards which have unlimited storage space, and; attractive and lightweight. The only minuses are that it doesn't have a rechargeable battery and docking station and it isn't very cheap (see below). If you're in need of a digital dictation/memo system for lots and lots of dictating, this one is very good, and I think, worth the money. However, if you're only going to do light recording, I'd go for a cheap one with internal memory only. So I'll say this is recommended (with four stars due to the price) but only for the serious dictaters out there.
Thanks for reading!
Davida Chazan (c) December, 2005 for DooYoo, revised May 2008 for Ciao!
~~~~~ Technical Stuff: The official web page for this can be found at http://www.dictation.philips.com/index.php?id=1458
We bought ours from Video Direct for $249.99 but we've found it at other places such as Amazon for $298.99. ~~~~~
More details
Sound Quality
Excellent sound quality
Ease of Use
Very easy
Reliability
Very Reliable
Value for Money
Excellent value for money
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