New Olympus Voice Product Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

This week Olympus Imaging took over the distribution of all Olympus voice products from Nationwide Dictating. Nationwide had been the sole distributor for the last sixteen years and had supported the voice community from their head office in Melbourne and small offices in Sydney and Brisbane.

Olympus Imaging have already started adding the voice products to their website - www.olympus.com.au and we will be seeing some new digital voice recorders in Australia soon, namely the amazing DM-450 and DM-550 recorders which have taken over from the now discontinued DS-55 and DS-65 models.

Also of note is the reduction in RRP for most of the recorders in the digital voice range. More details on this from at our main blog site: http://idictate.com.au

More Recorders Discontinued By Olympus Australia - WS-311M & WS-321M

In another surpise from Olympus Voice Australia, keeping the tradition of not telling anyone that its coming, they discontinued two more voice recorder models yesterday (10th July, 2009), they were the popular WS-311M digital notetaker and the next one up in the range the WS-321M. Both recorders were exactly the same in function and ability, the only difference came with their memory 512Mb for the WS-311M and 1Gb for the WS-321M and their colour. This now leaves just the WS-331M, with its massive 2Gb of memory from the original line up of three recorders.

When you think about it makes sense to drop these two. The WS-311M was very very close in spec and size to the WS-210S recorder, the WS-210S was quite a bit cheaper so maybe a pricing decision casued the WS-311Ms demise. Also the WS-321M, this was really an unneccary recorder, most people either went for the WS-311M or if they needed more memory would jump to the WS-331M so this recorder never really sold well.

In the WS series this now only leaves the WS-110 mono digital voice recorder (great for single speaker and one-on-one interviews), WS-210S stereo digital notetake (interviews, larger meetings, conferences and lectures) and the WS-331M (same as WS-321M but with added class in the piano black).

Olympus Voice Australia Increase Digital Voice Recorder Costs Today

Today we see some changes in the pricing and product line across the board from Olympus Voice Australia. Nearly all recorders get an increase in RRP (recommended retail price) with the exception of the VN-3100PC (which has gone down in price) and the DS-3300 which remains the same, we expect the DS-3300 to be dropped off the product line in the near future.

Two new digital notetakers have been added, the VN-3500PC and VN-5500PC which should be available in Australia towards the end of February. We anticipate that when these two arrive we can say goodbye to the VN-3100PC.

We also say goodbye to the VN-2100PC, not my favourite recorder so not too upset by that departure. The AS-4000 transcription kit has also now been discontinued after a long and distinguished career, this follows on from the Olympus DS-4000 discontinued late last year.

Other minor changes to the product lists include a replacement cable (KP21), power supply (A513) and carry case (CS119) for the Olympus DS-5000 and DS-5000iD.

The Olympus A513 power adapter can also be used with the Olympus LS-10 so good to see an alternative power option for this specialised digital PCM recorder.