hands free dictation, automated transcription
Written: Apr 23 '03
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Pros: voice activated recording, large capacity memory stick, speech recognition
Cons: supplied leather carrying case has velcro belt attachment that doesn't hold
The Bottom Line: This voice activated recorder is worth the price for anyone who wants a highly portable and high capacity voice to text capability.
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| clydec's Full Review: Sony ICD-MS515 (8 MB, 2.5 Hours) Handheld Digital ... |
This little sucker hums. It has transformed my daily driving time into something I look forward to. I use a monaural headset with the earpiece plugged into a tape player to listen to Teaching Company tapes, and the mic plugged into the MS515VTP. To make notes, I stop the tape player and flip the slide switch on the voice recorder (all done by touch, keeping eyes and attention on the road). Long pauses are no problem because of the voice activation.
I use a higher capacity 64MB memory stick, which holds about ten hours, which is more than I need. After about a week, I have about two or three hours worth of notes, which I transfer to my computer (5 minutes, using the supplied USB cable and Sony Memory Stick Voice Editor software) and queue up in 1.5-2 hour increments for a two step translation process. The first runs automatically (the Voice Editor drives the supplied Dragon voice recognition software), but takes about an hour per hour of recording on a 1Ghz machine. This gives a basic translation.
The second step is to edit the translation, which takes another hour. The Voice Editor software is very facile, and has a speed control so I can usually set it so that I only need one pass through the draft materials to make editing corrections. To solve the battery problem (I have to change the batteries every two or three hours of dictation), I got several sets of rechargeable batteries, one in the machine and other in a recharger. It all fits into a very comfortable routine.
I've become so attached to the routine, that I bought a second machine as a backup (when I ran into a problem with the microphone minijack plug connection and had to get it fixed.) I need to spend some more time training the voice recognition software, but it works tolerably well right out of the box. In the future, I hope to be able to reduce the editing time for an hour's dictation from an hour to ten minutes.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
clydec
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 2 members
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