Almost really great

I have been using Olympus digital recorders for some time. This is superior to the others in sound quality, functions, and ease of use. In particular I’m glad that Olympus has finally figured out how to treat their recorder as “memory” when connected to a computer. That way, you don’t need special software to transfer audio. A big bonus if you happen to be at some “foreign” computer that doesn’t have their special audio transfer software loaded. Sadly, Olympus has chosen to *not* make this software available for download. Again, that software was needed for many of their other digital recorders. With the DS-2 you just connect the cable to a USB port and drag/drop the audio files into the PC.

That said, and contrary to some of the other comments, I find the audio player software provided with the DS-2 to be quite convenient for processing dictation. The think I like best is you can control many key functions while you are in MS Word (for example) so your fingers never leave the keyboard. I’m sure there are fancier dictation processing packages around but I doubt you can find them for $100.

Also, the sound quality is great in the better quality recording modes. The stereo recording capability yields excellent voice recording, though hardly CD/music quality. Still, it’s noticeably better than mono recordings in similar devices. I also found the Voice Activation feature to be the best I have seen in a long line of audio recorders.

My only peeve is the USB connection on the DS-2 is a bit non-standard. You will need to carry their cable with you if you want to be able to transfer to audio to a “foreign” PC with any certainty. (Yea, it is kind of full circle. They removed the need to always have the software but made the device so you always need to carry their cable.)

I should add that I bought mine "slightly used" @ eBay. It is, however, easily worth the $100 asked for by most merchants around the Internet.