For those who need to record on the run, the L&H Voice Xpress Mobile Professional package list provides you with what you need to record notes and dictation and transcribe them into text when you return to your PC. The bundle includes L&H Voice Xpress Professional 4.0 and the Olympus DS-150 digital voice recorder, which runs on two triple-A batteries. With batch transcription and environmental noise compensation, the package is a compelling way to take your dictation on the road.

The 2-ounce DS-150 is half the thickness of the Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder and, with 8MB of flash memory, holds up to 75 minutes of speech--35 minutes more than Dragon's offering. Like the NaturallyMobile recorder, the DS-150 lets you dictate using an attached microphone or directly into the built-in mic. VCR-like controls let you record, play, erase, fast-forward, rewind, and pause recordings.

A menu button lets you easily navigate among and edit recordings or change settings, such as the date and time or microphone sensitivity. A seven-line LCD shows the dictation mode, length of the current recording, time remaining in memory, current folder, and battery status.

We found the DS-150 easy to use and convenient for quick notes. For more accuracy in longer dictations, you'll want to use the included headset microphone. A handy voice-activated recording feature pauses after 2 seconds of silence and resumes recording when you start speaking.

Before you transcribe your recordings, you must enroll the DS-150 into Voice Xpress as an input device. This requires reading a choice of training text and takes about 10 minutes. The company suggests enrolling the DS-150 four times for the best accuracy. Voice Xpress lets you use one speaker profile for both the DS-150 and your regular microphone, so all dictation affects a common language model.

To transcribe recordings, you connect the DS-150 to the included serial cable and attach the cable to your PC's serial port. The Olympus DSS Player software lets you download recordings one at a time or in batches. Once recordings are downloaded to your PC, you use L&H XpressPad Mobile to listen to the WAV files or transcribe them into text.

During transcription, XpressPad recognizes such commands as "comma," "period," and "new paragraph," so you can include basic formatting in your dictations. We had satisfactory results dictating into the built-in microphone, and the environmental noise compensation feature did a good job of canceling out background noise in various recording environments.

The L&H Voice Xpress Mobile Professional package will appeal to those who are comfortable taking quick notes by voice (doctors, for example) and to those who do a lot of dictating and would like to be able to dictate when not near a PC.

L&H Voice Xpress Mobile Professional. Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, Burlington, MA; 781-203-5000; www.lhsl.com.

The Olympus DS-150 is very slim and weighs only 70 g (!) yet offers all the benefits of digital speech processing. The convenient LC-Display shows the comprehensive information needed to control your work. With built-in flash memory for up to 160 minutes recording time and high data compression, the new Digital Voice Recorder stores all your notes and dictation recorded day and night. Being more than a conventional handheld dictation device, the DS-150 enables easy connection to a computer by serial cable and allows the e-mailing of your spoken words. Best of all - it can automatically convert your dictations into text. You can now also connect to your computer via a USB Adapter.     Features/Specifications Connect the recorder to your computer, with the provided serial cable or optional USB data transfer kit, and select files to download. Direct File Access and Editing Functions! Easy Data Transfer! E-Mailing Spoken Words! Secure Data Storage! And - best of all: no more typing! Product Requirements Available Serial Port Voice Recognition Software Informational Links http://www.officedirectinc.com/ViaVoice/ds150.htm http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-16332-405-132456. html?tag=st.co.16332-404-132456.dir-rev.16332-405-132456 Back to top Back to Descriptions