Everyone is talking about and to their digital voice recorders. Technology advances have not only dramatically improved the quality and usability of these hand held devices, it has also added a great deal of functionality. 

As market demand for small, easy to use note taking devices increase, manufacturers have responded by creating devices far superior to the old microcassette units. The new improved digital recorders are significantly smaller, offer substantial increase in record time and record quality, and a host of new productivity features.

For example the Sony CD-SX25 allows users to store up to 99 voice recordings in three separate folders, and to email those files using the packaged software that compresses the files and provides other features for editing, playing, and storing files. In addition, the software is integrated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software, which allows you to convert recordings to text.

Users say the technology is convenient, and easy to use. As society becomes more mobile, the demand for note taking devices that easily integrate with the pc increases. These units are poplar amongst mobile 
professionals for obvious reasons but students and other market sectors are starting to gravitate to the technology as well. Some Universities are now promoting digital voice recorders as a means to help students take 
notes in class. The recorder basically functions as a study aid, illustrating the technology is no longer just for business professionals.

As the technology evolves other options emerge to help not only capture voice but visual information. In June 2005 Sony released the ICD-CX50, which functions as a voice recorder and records still pictures. The ICD-CX50 uses an integrated circuit that records your voice while taking pictures. Pretty amazing, you can basically dictate detailed information 
about any visual image and later play back the information in a slideshow format complete with narration and the corresponding images. Definitely makes you want to throw out your old tape recorder.

Another factor lending to the popularity of the digital recorders. is price. the units are competitively priced and cost substantially les than many other mobile devices such as pocket pc's and pda's making them very attractive to just about everybody.