Digital Voice Recorder
 

I'm starting college next year, and I was thinking. Are there any good digital recorders out there, and would it be worth it for me to record and archive my classes? I've got plenty of hard drive space and hundreds of CDs, but I was just wondering a few things...

1. How much a decent one costs?
2. How large would the files be?
3. I'm going to be in quite small classes, mostly less than 20 people, would they work ok?
4. Is this a reasonable idea?

Thanks for any help :)

Edit: I'll be going to a technical school, VTC to be exact, for Civil Engineering

Can't answer the technical stuff, but I have seen people putting recorders in front of them, (the classes are about 200 people, and they're about halfway back,) so I'm guessing the quality's not too bad, and even better if your classes are that small. My parents got me one of those, but I've never used it. (Your lecturers will probably put their notes on the intranet, so I wouldn't worry too much about missing something.)

Are you going to transcribe the lecture to text? It can be pretty tedious to pour over the notes.

I mean, I used to fall asleep in class. Listening to the lecture a second time on a recorded tape just meant I fell asleep faster.

Well I was just thinking I would take some notes on the class, but not kill myself trying to get everything, and if there was something important that I missed, I might be able to go back and find what it was. But I was just planning on taking notes, recording the lecture, and saving the lecture just to go back and maybe refresh my memory. Depending on how I am on taking notes, I might not even need this, but the only thing it would really hurt is my hard drive space. :p

I've been looking for a bit and these two have caught my eye, I just can't decide if I would want to pay $85 more for 64mb more.

Olympus DM 10

Olympus DM 20

Ah... So there's the cure for insominiacs. :D

I have their VN-480PC. Works nicely, but the USB transfer is incredibly slow. If buying again I'd test while the option of returning is still available.

As for memory, the default amount should hold more than you'd need in a day. They're voice activated after all. The extra memory would give you slack should you accidentally leave it on between classes, or if you get lazy and not transfer audio to your PC before the next day's classes.