Good Tool of My Trade!

I have been a court transcriptionist for almost ten years and I have used, and or owned a variety of machines, depending on the type of work I have to do. Sometimes I use four-channel transcribing machines, sometimes single channel, sometimes micro-cassette machines.

For most of my transcription work I use the Panasonic RR-830 single-channel transcriber. It has a variable speed control, erase button, pause button and you can record as well as transcribe. The "erase" button you do have to be careful with in that it is too close to the "stop, play and rewind" buttons and one slip of the finger, and you can find yourself pushing the erase when you didn't want to and ... well, that can mean big trouble. I would have preferred the button be placed in a less dangerous spot on the machine where you have to really look for it before you can erase anything.

I have used this machine, extensively, for about eight years and the only problem I have ever had with this machine is with the foot pedal and that is not the fault of the machine but because of my ignorance in how I handled the equipment. I had a tendency that when I needed to use the machine, I would pull the foot pedal by the cord, either with my hand or with my foot to move it around, under my desk, to position it for working. This caused the delicately connected wires inside the pedal to eventually come lose which then caused the machine to work intermittently and eventually not work at all! Of course, I didn't know it was the foot pedal that was faulty, I thought it was the machine itself. I had to take it to a repairman and luckily for me this was relatively easy to fix and inexpensive.

As for the machine itself, I can certainly give it a good recommendation, but I do have one other small complaint in that it is not loud enough for some of my work which entails listening to courtroom cases with witnesses, judges and attorneys who are sometimes hard to hear when they are in a large courtroom. For transcribing a straight dictating tape it works very well.

I do have a couple of suggestions for anyone using a transcribing machine and who has to listen to tapes all day long as I do. I suggest using a headphone that one would use for listening to music. The type that will cover the entire ear, rather than the kind that just goes inside the ear, those with small ear pieces. After hours of using the earphones which come with the machine can make one's ears very sore.

The large-size headphones picks up sounds, or voices, better, and shuts out all other noises within the room you are working like; telephones, radios, dogs barking, children playing, etc.

I have also learned over these many years of using dictating equipment that when the machine is not in use, do yourself a favor, make sure you cover both the machine and the foot pedal with a dustcover of some kind. It is very important that these delicate machines be treated very, very carefully. When dust gets inside the guts of machine, it causes everything inside the machine to get gummed up and, eventually, you'll be taking it to the repairman. I've learned the hard way to take better care of these machines. They will go forever with a little tender love and care.

If this is the tool of your trade, as it is mine, you won't regret it. When the machine is in the shop, it costs you money two ways; one, you have to pay to have it fixed and two, you can't MAKE money if the machine is somewhere else being repaired.