Can anyone recommend a good digital portable voice recorder?

Just need to record audio, and save preferrably as mp3.

Allowing me to use the timestamp as the filename would be really need to.

Oh yeah, need to be able to transfer to my computer.

Won't your phone do this?

Colm, have you seen my new phone? Nokia POS.

The mike on the Treo was not that great so not really an option.

Still need to ship the LifeDrive back to palm for a replacement.

Plus, it would be nice to have something dedicated for the task.

I got an Olympus DM-1 some time ago aand it records in a proprietary format but it's easy enough to convert.

Bear in mind that speech is a specialised area and MP3 is not the optimum encoding.

would rather have .ogg or .mp3 than some proprietory format.

Like I said, it's easy enough to convert, and I get 20 hours on a 64Mb memory card

>would rather have .ogg or .mp3 than some proprietory format.

I investigated some dictaphones for my previous job, and they invariably used a proprietary format. Was a pain in the ass.

The Sandisk MP3 players are capable of this, and very inexpensive to boot.  My kids have played around with it more than I have, but the recording was really pretty decent, if you weren't trying to do some kind of high-fidelity broadcast.

My iRiver mp3 H300 player can do this (well it will not use the timestamp for a name, but you _do_ have the timestamp of the file-created attribute).

It can record 150 minutes, then you have to start a new recording - something with filesize, but it can store 40 GB in total: that's weeks on end.

It has a build in microphone, and an external one.

My daughter uses it to let study-friends record lectures that she cannot attend.

My Creative "Zen Nano" MP3 player also does this with either a built in microphone or a small headphone size jack that, presumably, can be plugged into a microphone.

I've never tested the quality of the recording, or how much it could hold on what compression level, or even if it has compression levels.

Clay, how is the recording quality on those things.

I would rather get a good dedicated machine than an MP3 player crossover.

If you want a good dedicated machine, I think you'll find they use a proprietary format because that's what works best.

If you're looking for cheap, it would be hard to beat.  It didn't seem any worse than my old-school cassette recorder, and it was a hell of a lot smaller.  Probably it was better quality.

if price is no object:

Roland Edirol R-09
http://www.roland.com/products/en/R-09/index.html

or

M-Audio 24/96 Microtrack (you will need a microphone)
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrack2496-main.html