My Review of Olympus® VN-5200PC Digital Voice Recorder

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Transfer files directly from the VN-5200PC to your PC through the VN-5200PC's PC link.

Olympus® VN-5200PC Digital Voice Recorder

Great for conference recording

umbellate Woburn, MA 6/24/2009

 

5 5

Pros: Compact Design, Reliable, High Quality Sound, Long Battery Life

Cons: Picks Up Background Noise

Best Uses: Lectures, Courtroom, Conversations

Describe Yourself: Tech Savvy, Court reporter

This model is much better than the Olympus WS-331 that I used to have. The built-in mike has more than adequate sound quality to pick up most voices in a large courtroom with minimal background noise (unless there's air conditioners on or fire trucks going by!). You can also plug your own mike into it; I use a lapel mike, and the sound quality is even better when you want to record people at about 2 feet away from them. Plugging in a "conference grabber" mike makes it have a little more background noise, but picks up more sounds from around the room; however, I prefer to use the built-in mike instead of a conference mike.

I use this as my backup recorder for my court proceedings, and there's been a few times when I've needed to rely on it for the sanctity of my job! It's come through every time; I can hear what people are saying, who's saying what, and am able to transcribe every word. It's a great little device at a great price!

()

Ah, computers...

Well, I just got a MacBook Pro (and a free iPod touch, to boot!), and here I am at work with both my Mac and my PC running, and I'm frantically trying to get work done, switching between each computer, plugging my Ethernet cable into one or the other to try to access the web, loading files onto my external hard drive so I can access them with both computers... ack! It's frustrating as hell! I can't wait until I get my Mac completely up and running with Windows XP (I need to partition the hard drive, I think you call it, in order to run it; I need to run it so I can court report). Then I'll have to get used to actually using the Mac! But I do love the new touch pad where you can swipe various numbers of fingers and have the windows swoop away or swoop back or swoop small and all that cool stuff.

Anyway, we're going to North Carolina next week to visit our good blog friends Pat and Kate and their baby Ted. We're very excited for a vacation. We'll be taking Jay's soccer-mom minivan down, and hopefully we'll hit a few cool places along the way. If anyone has any suggestions for some funky places to stop, let me know!

Well, back to work. Gotta love yousendit.com.

Home improvement fund!

Wowers! I haven't posted in AGES. AGES, I tell you!!

Anyway. I've decided to post because I recently opened up a home improvement fund for some home improvements we hopefully plan on starting sometime soon. The biggest project will be the kitchen and bathroom, which will consist of knocking down walls (I hope).

This is our poorly designed kitchen. As you can see, we have a mobile dishwasher which doesn't fit really anywhere, so we put it in front of the silverware drawer and the pots and pans cabinet. Handy! In the lower right-hand corner, you can see the counter juts out, which is just dumb. Why didn't they just extend the stupid counter??

This is another shot of our kitchen heading into the useless hallway that leads to the bathroom and then to the main hall. The yellow wall to the left after the fridge is the one we want to rip out and use the extra space to extend the bathroom out.

Here's our teeny bathroom. And yes, that bright yellow thing on the counter IS a nose whistle.

Here's a unique shot of part of the bathroom, a wall, and part of the kitchen. I don't really know why I posted this.

Here's a hammer smashing through the wall next to the hallway closet, which is pretty much useless. If we break down that wall, we could extend our bathroom way out!

Here's a new curtain panel I bought at Target. We've been trying to figure out what kind of curtains to get, and we wanted something kind of funky and modern, but couldn't really find anything. I'm sick of the neighbors being able to see us through the sheer curtains we have, so I picked up these rust-colored curtains. (No, I didn't specifically like them just because they're orange!) They look nice with the earth tones in our living room. I'm sure later (perhaps much later) we'll get some nice, funky curtains. But this'll do for now!

Anyway, that's my two cents. I don't know what got me back on the posting bug. Perhaps it was modcloth.com. They sent me an e-mail about blogging. I'd post a picture of me wearing a Modcloth outfit, but I always look super tubby in them. Wait... I AM super tubby!

Thanks for reading, everyone! Comments, suggestions welcome. (I like when people comment. How selfish is that?)

-Erin