I have a phone interview coming up with a busy, fast-talking internet personality, so I'm reluctant to rely on my typing or handwriting skills to take down everything he says. Meanwhile, I'm embarking on a major nonfiction book project, so I think that between these two situations, it's time for me to go ahead and buy a digital recorder.

I had a recorder once. It was charming in a 1989 kind of way. It used little tapes and could record phone conversations but only if you used phones that had cradles and cords. I never liked that recorder very much, especially when I recorded a phone interview with author JT Leroy and it came out almost inaudible (but maybe that's what you get when you interview a nonexistent author.)

My requirements are pretty simple:

*the recorder must be relatively easy to use

*it must be able to record phone conversations (it's been so long since I've looked at recorders I don't even know if you can record interviews from cordless phones?)

*I would love to be able to upload the audio to my PC and then possibly transcribe the interviews using a system like Dragon.

However, I have posted this question on Ask Metafilter and I have been told that this might just be a pipe dream.

I am accepting suggestions for what type of recorder to buy (within reason, price isn't an issue as long as I get what I pay for.) So email me: claire AT mediabistro.com, and let me know your recommendation. Next week I'll post a poll and you the readers can vote on which one to buy, and I'll do it, by gosh. I'm hoping you won't purposefully guide me towards a crappy recorder just to spite me in hopes of my failure. That always happens!