I am a musician doing a music technology with popular music degree. I do regular gigs, write a lot of songs and play and jam with a varied and large quantity of different musicians. Due to my course at University and the musicians I do concerts with I am always writing different songs. The problem I, and many many other musicians, have is that the best songs and ideas for songs come at the most in-appropriate times. This is where the Sony ICD-B 500 comes in handy.

The problem with this piece of hardware is that over time it has become obsolete. Mobile phones have really started to take over the portable, low quality recording scene. I can record on my mobile phone the same quality recording, almost, as this device and I have a pretty cheap phone. Also, doing all your recording on a phone means that there is nothing else you need to remember to take out with you: no extra weight, no extra thought, no extra space is needed with a mobile phone. And in relation to such technology, the dictaphone isn't particularly cheap. This model costs almost £30 and when you can get a mobile phone that does the same thing along with rining, texting, taking photos etc... what is the point?

On the other hand, I own one of these devices and It is invaluable in the context of the amount I use it. The thing about a dictaphone is that it is their for the purpose of recording. Rather than taking out my mobile phone I will always use this. It has an awfullot of memory and I know that if I am likely to find a recording I have done and don't remember it will be on this. I have no reason to be deleting things, to make room for txt messages or photos. The fact that it is purpose built means that I use it more often.

Two days ago I picked up my dictaphone to have a listen to some of the things I have recorded and I found a song I had started to write. I had completely forgotten about this song until listening to it because at the time I recorded it on the device I was writing something else, and the other thing took priority. I hadn't remembered this other song, due to intoxiction of a kind, and started to learn it again. This would have never happened on my mobile phone because I just don't think of it like that.

The mobile phone is a disposable product with no where near the charm of the dictaphone. Everyone has a mobile phone and there is nothing special about any of them really, just a popular necessity. Having a dictaphone makes you want to record your thoughts and songs.

In comparison to other dictaphones this is a good price, light, pretty high quality, has at least 1825 mins of voice or sound recording.

My main issue with this is that it doesn't have anything direct to put in your computer. Sure, you can use the headphone output to plug into your computers microphone input but really we all want USB!!!

It's easy to delete things, easy to record, has pretty good quality and is small, light and easy to remember. Personally, I never need anything on my computer from this anyway because the play back is pretty good. On the other hand, if you need it on your computer all you need is a programme like Audacity and it's very easy.

My opinion is you don't need anythign better than this, keep to tradition and get a easy but useful dictaphone!