Anyone here use a digital dictaphone?

[antaine]

hi folks, I need to get a digital dictaphone (or digital voice recorder) to tape some local stories from some of my elderly relations and neighbours. I then plan on writing a local book.

I would like something that has 2 hours at good quality (as some of the clips may be added to a cd-rom or dvd) and is connected by usb to a pc (and records audio as mp3 or wav)

I see a lot of DVR's with 512MB on ebay - although the advertise as a DVR they seem to be more mp3 players. There are a few digital dictaphones but they only have 32 or 64MB memory even though they promise 80mins which means the quality must be poor?

{A normal 3min mp3 is about 3 Mb so that's approx 60MB per hour - right??!!}


This one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/15-hours-Digital-voice-audio-pen-recorder-MP3-Phone-Rec_W0QQitemZ7554711814QQcategoryZ62041QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem


The above one has the following spec:

MP3 data stream rate 64Kdps—320Kdps
MP3 sampling rate 8Khz— 48KHz
MP3 frequency response (+-1db) 20Hz—20KHz
MP3 harmonic distortion (1KHz) 0.01%
MP3 signal noise ratio >85db
MP3 track separation >85db
MP3 dynamic range >93db
Recording code length 12bit
Recording sample rate 8KHz

what should I be looking for? many thanks for any replies.
A.