Recording lectures: Digital recorders? Voice to text?

[Warning]

My wife's a grad student and has three-hour long lectures she wants to record. She thought about getting a microcassette recorder but decided she wants to do it digitally and download the lectures to our computer for storage or burn to a CD/DVD. Several issues/questions:

1) We have a Dell Axim x30 Pocket PC with plenty of space on the storage card and it does have a built-in microphone. Is this the way to go? I'm not sure my battery will last for 3 hours while recording. Is there special software that should be used?

2) Should we buy a digital voice recorder instead? I know nothing about these but I'm assuming there should be some sort of flash-based recorder out there that could interface with our computer to transfer the lecture.

3) Should I just buy an iPod (since I'm going to eventually get one anyway - as The Emperor says "It's inevitable") and one of those microphones that let you record onto the iPod's hard drive? Are the mikes any good? I've read spotty reviews.

4) Once I get the audio file on the computer's hard drive is there software that's reasonably priced that will convert the audio file to written text (i.e. Microsoft Word)?

Thanks for any help on this!

[Drastic]

It's worth testing out the Pocket PC option. Why not just set it up to record and leave it by a playing television or whatnot for three hours and check periodically to see if it'll stay alive that long from a full charge?

My student days are long behind me by the time I owned my first hard-drive based digital jukebox/recorder geegaw (an Archos something-or-other, later replaced by an iRiver HP-140 still in use and going strong); playing around with their voice recording functions indicated only, beware of hard disk sounds in the recording--I assume an external mike would alleviate that effect, though. Could still tell what was said, however, so that route's definitely an option, and this may be a golden opportunity to seize an excuse to increase your gadget power. Gadget power's important!

[BobJustBob]

I've had an Olympus digital voice recorder for years, and it's pretty nice. Using a 64 MB Smartmedia card it can record about 10 hours of voice, and the 2 AAA batteries easily last that long.

[Hanzii]

To answer the technical question first (as a nice guy):
To get decent easy to decipher quality, you'd have to either plug it into the teachers mike, put it in his pocket or leave it right next to a speaker.
Anything with a good external mike would be better (but you'd still need the mike close to the source to get good quality audio).

My own question: Why?
Why not just take good notes?
It's a proven fact that notetaking not only gives you something to look subjects up in later, but the entire process of notetaking helps you to remember the subject better.
A soundrecording isn't easy to search later (unless you transcribe everything, and in that case you'd still be better off by taking notes in the first place)
Unless you have a secretary transcribing the recording for you (or a damn nifty computerprogram, which I haven't experienced yet) you're not really helping yourself by recording lectures.
Or am I missing something here?

I'm a journalist and only record people when the subject is touchy and there's a risk/chance that they'll try later to claim they where misquoted (ie interviewing politicians and CEOs). Otherwise good notetaking techniques (books are avaliable) are not only cheaper but better.

[Wholly Schmidt]

I've got the Griffin iTalk for my iPod, but no experience with any other recorders to compare it to. If you have an iPod anyway I'd say go for it, but if you don't, I wouldn't go this route unless you could totally justify the iPod purchase by itself without the recording capabilities.

My iPod is a 3rd generation, when they were claiming 8 hour battery life. I can record just about exactly three straight hours, I've gone over that by a little bit but never drained it completely. The battery indicator tells me I'm just about out though. The current iPods claim 12 hour battery life, I'm not sure if the recording time would translate comparably but I imagine it would. As for sound quality, it varys by what kind of room I'm in. Bigger lecture halls are of course harder to get just the professor speaking. I still manage to get everything they say, but they're more easily drowned out by someone coughing two rows in front of me or something. Regardless of the room, the iTalk does pick up a lot of background noise, but it's not generally too bad unless I'm the one coughing right next to it or tapping my pen on the desk.

The iTalk also allows you to plug in your own mic, but I haven't gotten that fancy. That could potentially give you better recording quality.

Really the iTalk shines if you already have the iPod and also want the simple digital integration with your computer. It's fully Apple supported and works with iTunes, synching up and putting the new recordings on my computer without a hitch. If you want to explore this option any further, I can provide you with some recordings I've made of lectures.

As for Hanziis concern, I listen to some of my lectures while running. I don't know exactly how much it's helping me, but I can't take my notebook running easily and it keeps my mind off the running at least.