OM SYSTEM Olympus AS-2300 PC Transcription Kit

While I love my Olympus digital recorder, and this is the only food pedal I could find that works with its software, this pedal is just horribly designed. First, the main center part of the pedal for "play" is not big enough--it is barely as wide as my (mens' size 6) shoe--so every time you lift your foot to hit rewind, if you don't put it back RIGHT on the center, you will hit rewind or FF again by mistake. BIG PROBLEM--this is the very core of what the pedal is for! I find I have to keep scooting back and looking down at my shoe to see where it is on the pedel. The only solution to this is to take off your shoe and only use the pedal with your sock, so you can feel the ridges of where the play pedel ends and the raised rewind and FF foot buttons being. The second problem that blows my mind is the rewind is on the RIGHT and the fast forward is on the LEFT! HUH? Why in the world would they reverse these from their instinctive locations? Third, the price is just ridiculous. If you think you can buy the pedal alone with a different part/model number you find elsewhere, think again--you must have the CD that comes with this pedal to unlock the foot pedal capability within the Olympus software--without the CD, the software that came with your recorder will not recognize the food pedal. All that being said, it does work when you take off your shoe, and, it's the only option out there that I could find.

I am a doctoral student and I purchased this to help me transcribe hours and hours of interviews myself. I spent a lot of time researching recording/transcription equipment and liked the reviews on the olympus products. This kit is very easy to use and plugs right into my laptop. I also bought the Olympus digital voice recorder (WS-310M)which has incredible memory and quality recordings, and radio shack helped me out with a telephone adapter for phone use as well. I have not done transcribing before and this made it manageable. I highly recommend it.

Not bad at all. Nice solid construction, works like it should. Setup is simple, but a more detailed manual would not hurt. One snag in setup process was that you need to use the DSS Player serial number supplied in the box for the pedal to work - software itself is identical to what you probably already have installed, but you'll need to uninstall and then reinstall using new serial number. Very annoying, and documented nowhere. Also, just to keep you on our toes, the right pedal is rewind, and the left pedal is fast forward. If you're typing in Arabic or Hebrew that might seem commonsensical, but otherwise it's a-backwards. [In the next iteration of the software I imagine the little black square will mean play, the red circle will mean stop and the little black arrow will mean record.] But again, at the end of the day everything works fine. I'd buy it again.

I had been waiting for some thing like this for a while and finally I am able to do the digital dictations without much hassle and at a very affordable price. I purchased an Olympus DS 2300 recoder, put a 512mb card and I have 84 hours of recording time. The voice is clear and crisp compared to tape recorders, backup is a snap, and software is very intuitive. I just bought another DS 2300 recorder for a backup in case I drop mine in a coffe cup.

The product itself is great, but this arrived from the 3rd party seller WITHOUT A SERIAL NUMBER! I purchased it as a back up over 5 years ago, and now that I need it, I can't use it! I should have examined everything, but the contents were sealed, so I assumed there would be no nonsense. Looking at the box closer, I see that there are labels placed over labels. Terrible seller.