Customer Reviews

Remanufactured Olympus VN-480-PC Digital Voice Recorder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It turns out that the Olympus instructions omit the second part of installing the drivers that allow download. I found instructions on another site.

1) Install the software from the CD.

2) LEAVE THE CD IN THE DRIVE FOR THE FIRST CONNECTION

3) Connect the VN device. If the Windows "found new hardware" routine comes up automatically, then just work through that. Choose "automatic" when it asks where to look for the drivers.

4) If the "found new hardware" doesn't come up automatically, use the "add new hardware" feature in the control panel.

5) My installer found two different possible infs - one was the VNUSB the other was oem... Use the one that is highlighted by the installer, which for me was not the VNUSB

6) The hardware installer will complete as usual and recognize the device.

It still has a clunky file and folder structure, but will do for voice recording.

Michael

1. Olympus doesn't provide drivers online. Why not? It's not like they have any value if you haven't purchased the player already.

2. The VN series is evidently not compatible with Windows Vista. It won't let me reinstall the drivers.

3. The forced file hierarchy (A, B, C groups) is dumb and causes problems. Why can't I just plug it in and drag/drop your files in Windows Explorer?

4. When you speak, S's pop even when you're a couple of feet away.

I wish I had purchased another brand.

If you can get the driver for this to install on Windows XP Pro, you're a better man than I. The CD software seems to install OK but then when you connect the recorder to the PC with the USB cable, the PC wants to install a driver manually. If you tell Windows not to install the driver (since, I thought, it was already installed off the CD), Windows doesn't recognize the recorder and the Digital Wave player software doesn't see any of the files on the recorder. On the other hand, if you do tell Windows to install the driver and manually point it to the VNUSB.INF file on the CD, it comes back with an error message and the Digital Wave player software still doesn't see the recorder. This is what it did on my PC at work; on my PC at home, results were even worse--it froze that PC so I couldn't even shut it down normally, but had to hit the reset button. It's been several years since I've seen a driver this kludgey.

I can't believe I'm calling something that came out 4 or 5 years ago old but with today's technology it is. I bought this for my wife about 4 years ago because she wanted something that she could record her shopping list on and then play back. She used it for about a month but decided that she didn't like all the looks she kept getting at the grocery store when she was playing back her list. It's been sitting in a drawer since then until I took it out the other day. I am in Graduate school and I wanted something I could use to record my professors while they are lecturing. My classes are two and a half hours long and this works great. At the end of the lecture I just upload the sound file to my laptop and I'm ready for my next class. Sure it would be nice to have more memory than 3 hour but that's the only complaint I have for it so far. Great little device!

From what I can tell most of the other reviews were a couple years back and they were unable to connect the device to there computers. I went to Olympus's website and downloaded the devices and programs there and it is very compatible to the Window's Vista on my laptop. Looks like Olympus has fixed this problem.

4 stars only because I would like more than 3 hours of record time.

If you go to Olympus' website, you'd expect to find the driver for this DVR, but no...not Olympuss. Spend your money on a product that is supported...always. It's easy to google and see if they support their stuff. If support is the most difficult thing about them, there is a reason.

I found it hard to find drivers for the VN-480 in Windows XP, which didn't recognise it automatically. I should say that this is the original VN-480 not the remanufactured, and I do have a CD disk with it. I had to try several times to install drivers and also tried download from several Olympus sites. Eventually I did manual search of the CD and I got it to work but it shouldn't be so hard.

Also the DSS player has some really awful functionality. You have to download entire folders from the recorder, you can't search within folders on the recorder, and you have to store the files in a specified directory which is not configurable.

The recording quality and functionality is all standard and as you would expect.

However, the device does not integrate with the file system when uploading to your PC and you are forced to use the terrible Waveplayer. You can't copy files to new locations or save them in multiple places for security. For this reason, I'd avoid this product as there are much better interfaces out there.

This product is extremely easy to use. High and Medium Quality recording settings both sound great, and transferring files is a breeze. Sure, it's refurbished, but aren't we all? Hollatchaboy.

I document meetings at work so we got an Olympus VN-480-PC Digital Voice Recorder at work. It did not last one day before I got an "ERR" message. It never worked again. We returned it and will never get one ever.

This product was not adequately described in the product information. It was not compatible with voice-recognition programs, and it should have said so up front. It has good voice reproduction, but just wasn't exactly what I was looking for.