Rating: 
Summary: Im Very Happy With My Voice Recorder
Review: I got this recorder becuase it can download on my Mac and I am very happy with it's preformace. I use it to record my lectures at school. I have some all day lectures and it records the whole time. The play back is good but not the best I have heard. For my life the DS33O Recorder fits perfectly.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: I have tested several different units. For medical dictations, this is the best. Very good voice activated recording; very good rewind with ability to listen while rewinding; very easy and effective file management; great cradle to doc and download files. Really an awesome product. Blows the competition out of the water.
Rating: 
Summary: Neat gadget, loads of features
Review: I just bought this so take my review with some salt, but still this seems like a pretty cool toy.
It's very small, very lightweight, and has a lot of features.
Voice activation, 2.5 hours at good quality, usb interface with your computer.
The voice activation feature works quite well (just turn your recorder on and leave it in a room to find out what happens when you're gone: very James Bond).
I'm particularly impressed with how well it interfaces with my computer (a Macintosh). The files pop up on my screen and are easy to transfer over (and translate to MP3s, if you have the software).
The downsides are the price and the sound quality. The sound is reasonable but not fantastic. There is a SP (standard) setting but no HQ (high quality) setting. The SP records at 12khz, unlike some higher quality recorders which do 22khz. Still, for most voice purposes 12khz is fine.
Rating:
Summary: Works fine with Win98SE
Review: I just got the DS-330 today. In response to Dale's previous post, I had no problem installing the software and driver on a Dell workstation running Win98SE. The OS found the right driver to install, though I can't be sure it used the one on the CD. Made a test recording, transferred the *.dss file from recorder to computer, converted to a *wav file, no problem at all. Haven't tested anything else yet, but it seems seems to work fine. Dale, I can email you with more details but your address is not visible.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice design but poor voice quality
Review: I like the display of the DS330 and it's features are very nice. However, when I compared the recording quality against the Sony ICD-BP150, the difference was like day and night. If you want it just for voice recording, it might work just fine. I wanted good quality recording so that I can record my piano playing. On the DS330, the recorded piano sound hardly sounded like anything but broken music. It also has annoying background noises which becomes very obvious when the volume is turned up. The Sony BP150 also had switches on the back which allows easy control of VOR and playback speed. Whereas on the DS330, you have to go through a set of menu options to make the necessary adjustments.
Rating: 
Summary: Owners of Win98SE OS beware
Review: I purchased this unit because my computer was chopping off words during recording narrations using the Winnov Videum system to record audio (an excellent system, by the way). The fault is somewhere with my computer not the Winnov card or software. The DS-330 gave me nothing but headaches and hours on the telephone with Olympus, Dell, and Microsoft support techs trying to resolve the "no driver found for this device" problem. I won't go into the details here (it would take too long); suffice it to say that each support team stated the problem was with the other's software or OS. For the privilege of having Microsoft's Win98SE support team tell me there was nothing they could do. So, in short, I cannot use the device to download files from the recorder (as WAV files, which I then convert wo .swa files) to my home PC. The device was successfully installed on my office computer (Win2000Pro OS) but on Win98SE, forget it. Although Olympus told me that the drivers were on the disc (indeed they are), my OS does not recognize them. If anyone out there has successfully gotten their Win98SE OS to recognize the device and install the drivers, I would GREATLY appreciate an email telling me if you experienced the same problems and what you had to do, if anything, to get around them. I give two stars solely due to the inability to install it and use the download feature on Win98SE. I will upgrade my computer next year to Win2000--perhaps then it will work at home.
Rating:
Summary: Great for lectures
Review: I recently purchased this voice recorder because I am the note taker for one of my graduate courses and I needed something I could count on working well. This voice recorder has replaced my old tape recorder that had so much background noise it took me several hours to decipher a single lecture. With this little gem I feel like I am sitting in the lecture all over again. I was worried about its performance because many of the questions asked are not repeated by the professors, so you have to be there to hear them. With this recorder the questions asked in the back (approx. 30 feet away) are recorded well. I might have to turn up the volume when listening to it, but that is hardly a problem. Keep in mind that I am only recording for one 2.5 hour class on SP mode, so I am getting the highest quality recording possible with the least amount of recording time. Switching between menu items is easy to do. Plus the instruction booklet has very simple directions. I agree with the other reviews that the overall appearance is attractive, yet discrete and the buttons are solid which is nice for the many years of use it will be getting.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for Everyday Tasks!
Review: I've had mine for a week now and can find very little fault with this sleek little device. I've not even hooked up the USB connection to my PC. My purpose in purchasing this device was for simple note taking (dictation and idea capturing) and not for recording meetings. On the "SP" and "dictation" settings, voice playback is crisp and clean, sounding like typical tape-based audio recorders. It seems to provide the best output speaking in a normal voice holding the unit about 1 foot away. My primary intent in selecting a recorder was ease of use, durability, size, quality and price. So far, the Olympus DS-330 has proven easy to use. Turn on using the "hold" slider, hit "new" for a new file, hit "rec" to start recording and "stop" to stop. The unit defaults to appending to the current file so to continue recording, you simply hit "rec" again. The "rew" rewind function is cool, counting back on the LCD timer to any spot along the way. Hit "play" to listen to your output and hit "erase" and the file is gone, or drop it to your PC for safekeeping. For this simple mode of operation, it's hard for me to imagine this not being an excellent fit. With lots of time in the field, I'll be interested to see how durable it is and how long the batteries last. It fits comfortably in the palm of my very large hands and comes with a really nice carrying case (like a lot of todays digital phones with a wrap-around, use-in-the-case design). With today's dark (black) colored personal computing devices, this Olympus unit fits right in (did I mention it was sleek looking?). Note, this is kind of a "duh" point, but output is monaural, not stereo, and you'll only get sound in one ear of your headphones using the "ear" plug. The price is a little higher than a lot of units, but I sense it's worth it (particularly if you're after the advanced features). So far, awesome!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for Everyday Tasks!
Review: I've had mine for a week now and can find very little fault with this sleek little device. I've not even hooked up the USB connection to my PC. My purpose in purchasing this device was for simple note taking (dictation and idea capturing) and not for recording meetings. On the "SP" and "dictation" settings, voice playback is crisp and clean, sounding like typical tape-based audio recorders. It seems to provide the best output speaking in a normal voice holding the unit about 1 foot away. My primary intent in selecting a recorder was ease of use, durability, size, quality and price. So far, the Olympus DS-330 has proven easy to use. Turn on using the "hold" slider, hit "new" for a new file, hit "rec" to start recording and "stop" to stop. The unit defaults to appending to the current file so to continue recording, you simply hit "rec" again. The "rew" rewind function is cool, counting back on the LCD timer to any spot along the way. Hit "play" to listen to your output and hit "erase" and the file is gone, or drop it to your PC for safekeeping. For this simple mode of operation, it's hard for me to imagine this not being an excellent fit. With lots of time in the field, I'll be interested to see how durable it is and how long the batteries last. It fits comfortably in the palm of my very large hands and comes with a really nice carrying case (like a lot of todays digital phones with a wrap-around, use-in-the-case design). With today's dark (black) colored personal computing devices, this Olympus unit fits right in (did I mention it was sleek looking?). Note, this is kind of a "duh" point, but output is monaural, not stereo, and you'll only get sound in one ear of your headphones using the "ear" plug. The price is a little higher than a lot of units, but I sense it's worth it (particularly if you're after the advanced features). So far, awesome!
Rating:
Summary: Best when closer to the person speaking
Review: I've read some of the reviews about the recorder being able to record lectures really well, even from far away, but I've found that this recorder will pick up more of the surrounding noise than the lecture if you're more than 6-10ft away from the person speaking. I really love the fact that you can store and listen to recordings on your computer. It definitely saves money and space from regular tape recorders. The battery life I've found last maybe around 2 weeks. Like maybe 6-8hrs each week if you turn it off and on. I bought Rayovac's 15min rechargable batteries for the recorder. It records about 2hrs and 30mins? on SP speed and about 5 hrs or so on LP. I prefer the SP speed because the quality of the sound is better on playback, but I've had to download the files on the recorder more frequently. This recorder is best if you have only 2 classes a day that run about an hour each, or maybe even 3 classes if you want to record at LP speed. Overall it's a great recorder.
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