excellent device, poor software

The VN-4100PC is the version of this Olympus voice recorder with a USB port and supplied cable for connecting it to your computer.

The physical unit is excellent in my opinion. It is smaller and lighter than most cell phones, easily drops in a shirt pocket (a good reason to have a shirt pocket), and is simple to use and has a reasonable number of features for organizing your voice recordings.

For me, simplicity out of the box is a key selling point for a voice recorder, and this one passes the test. It has a record button and a stop button, and that's all you need to make recordings. The very readable LCD display bumps up the number of the recording each time you press the stop button. The number is the index of the last recording you made. Pressing the "Play" button plays the recording whose number is showing in the LCD display. Pressing the forward and back arrows on the circular control surrounding the play button cycles you through your recordings, showing the index number of the recording in the display, so you can easily choose which one you want to play back. The little built-in speaker is a very welcome feature compared to mp3 players that require earphones. But you can also play back through earphones (not included) if you want privacy.

The recorder allows you to store your recordings in any of four folders called A, B, C, and D. Out of the box, your recordings go into folder A, and so far I haven't needed to select a different folder. You can store 100 recordings in each folder according to the manual. (sometimes manuals are out-of-date, so I haven't confirmed that number). Personally, I don't like the limitation of 100 recordings per folder and I don't know why they didn't try harder to allow more. I think that limit is a weakness, but not a terrible one. However, there may be circumstances where you want to make a lot of short recordings all day long without worrying about hitting a limit, so I still consider it a weakness. To select a different folder, there is a convenient "Folder/Index" button which cycles through the folders to select the current folder your recording will go into (the folder is visible in the display). If you turn the recorder off then back on, it remembers the current folder.

There is an erase button which is fairly safe and quite easy to use with a little experimentation. You press the erase button and a menu appears on the LCD display with "Yes" and "No" in it, with "No" selected, so if you accidentally hit buttons it is unlikely you will erase a recording. By pressing the left or right arrows on the circular control button, you can select "Yes", then press the central "Play" button to execute your selection, which deletes the recording whose number is currently displayed in the LCD display. There is also a procedure for erasing an entire folder.

One more button on the front is called "Disp/Menu". A quick press cycles a status line for the currently displayed recording (usually the most recent) which shows: Playing time (zero if in Stop mode), Remaining Playing time, Recording Time of the recording. While recording, it alternates between the current recording elapsed time and remaining available recording time.

Holding down the "Disp/Menu" activates the feature menu which allows you to select advanced features. I think of main interest is the recording quality (XHQ, HQ, SP, LP)which affects total recording time available), microphone sensitivity (hi or low), Voice Actuation (only records when sound is louder than selectable threshold). Out of the box, the unit is set to HQ which gives you almost 24 hours of total recording time with the 256 meg memory, and quite good quality. I noticed another reviewer claims that the XHQ and HQ are the same, and I agree the file properties (after transferring to my computer) look identical. However, XHQ mode seems to sound like it is capturing higher frequencies to me. I actually would like an even higher quality mode available even if very short recording time.

The power switch is on the side and the "off" position is labeled "Hold". That's weird. Oh well, just go with it. If you leave the recorder on but not recording, it will go into a power-saver mode by itself after a minute. The recorder takes two AAA batteries or you can get a rechargeable NI-MH battery as an accessory.

So to summarize the hardware unit itself: easy to use for a busy person. Turn it on, press "Rec", talk, press "Stop". To playback, press "Play", listen to the built-in speaker (great to . I've used it to record conversations on a speaker phone, and it worked well.

The software/PC-connectivity of the VN-4100PC is another story. I think it is weak, and I tend to compare it with my little Chinese MP3 player with voice-recording capability.

The first disappointment with the Olympus is that when you connect the recorder via USB cable (included), it does not install itself as a conventional drive like a flash memory (jump drive, e.g.) does. Instead, you need to use the special Olympus software (on supplied CD) to transfer your recordings as files. And to make it worse, the software seems primitive and slow. I really love my Chinese MP3 player/recorder -- I just pull off an end cap exposing the USB plug and plug the device directly into my computer USB port (no cable needed). It appears just like a "flash memory drive", so I can use normal Windows Explorer to click on audio files, play them, drag them to my hard drive, erase them, etc. The problem with my MP3 player is the display is very difficult to read and I can't always tell if the unit is recording or stopped, the buttons and menus are very hard to use, and I have trouble making recordings reliably. But it works in a pinch.

The Olympus software also makes it completely mysterious where on your hard drive it creates the "mirror" folders (A, B, C, D) where it transfers your recordings to. I finally found them under "Joe's Documents | Digital Wave Player | Messages | FolderA" etc. The software program (as far as I can tell) will not reveal where the folders are (can't right-click and choose Properties, for instance). It also only seems to allow me to transfer entire folders at a time, and does not seem to let me see individual audio files on the recorder, only in the "mirror" folders after it transfers the folder to the "mirror" folder. I can't preview the files before transferring, as I can with my MP3 player. Perhaps I don't know a trick, but it shouldn't be that mysterious. So this means that I can not easily transfer audio files to any computer, only computers where I have installed the special Olympus "Digital Wave Player" software -- very inferior to the MP3 player which implements the flash memory standard. The transferring seems quite slow as well compared to a simple file copy from a flash memory device, but I haven't timed it so that is an impression.

I checked the FAQ for the VN-4100PC on the Olympus web site, and they claim that you cannot make an Audio CD from the WAV files transferred from the recorder because of the unusual 4-bit format. Perhaps, but you can burn them to CD as data files, and Windows Media Player will play them, albeit with a stutter or two at times.

So in summary, the software / computer connection aspects of the Olympus VN-4100PC are disappointing but not fatal -- I still feel it is a good tool and at least there is a way to store the audio recordings on your computer.