Suggest you get a good recorder cheap,

rather than a cheap recorder.

Try an Olympus DS-330, either on E-Bay, where Olympus has recently started selling them at auction (usually new), or at www.provantage.com, where they are $91.56 right now, best price around. It comes with software that downloads the files from the recorder to the computer.

It's a good recorder with excellent sound quality. It records files as dss files, which are "smaller" than wav files and thus can be transferred to you faster and sometimes cheaper than wav files (although, for only 5 minutes of dictation a day the size of the file may not make any real difference -- you won't be getting much dictation anyway).

For doing 5 minutes of dictation a day, all the doctor will have to do is turn it on, press record, and press stop when finished.

To download the files to the computer, he doc can place the recorder in the cradle, click the mouse once to tell it the software to download the files, the files will download and be erased from the recorder. Takes just a few seconds to download.

After the files are on the computer, doc can send them to you with encrypted e-mail or something like www.hypersend.com or any of the other web-based file transfer services or through an FTP site. The file transfer services and FTP sites usually charge by how much space you use (that's why dss can be cheaper). You can use the same service to send the completed transcription back to the doc.

You can use Express Scribe (free) to transcribe the files or any other transcription software that will play dss files. Express Scribe also has a feature that will let you return the completed transcription to the doctor by e-mail, but I have never used this.

This would be an inexpensive system to set up and should work fine. The only costs would the recorder, whatever file transfer service you use (or you could probably even find a free e-mail encryption software to use), and the cost of a foot pedal.

Follow Ups:

• Olympus DS-330 - Jan 12:14:03 03/11/05 (4)
  • Standard Infinity pedal - Jan 13:37:20 03/11/05 (2)
    • Mine has a sticker on the bottom that says - sm 13:40:40 03/11/05 (1)
      • And don't buy an Olympus foot pedal - - sm 13:52:22 03/11/05 (0)
  • I use a standard Infinity pedal it works with this system just fine. - nm 13:32:06 03/11/05 (0)