PC Today

PC Today
May 1994

FLASHY RECORDINGS

Magnetic tape recording has been available for 100 years, but now a San Diego-based company is taking the "tape" out of voice recording. Norris Communications Corp. has patented a handheld recorder that uses Intel's removable "Flash" memory technology. The company says the palm-sized device and its recording media will be available to consumers this summer.

The removable "SoundClips" have no moving parts and consist of a solid-state medium that requires no batteries and is impervious to magnetic fields. According to the company, a SoundClip can be re-recorded hundreds of thousands of times with no degradation in sound quality.

Whatever you do with a tape recorder you can do with the Flashback: record, play, fast forward, pause, reverse. But you'll also be able to insert or edit messages without recording over subsequent speech, much like the way you insert text with a word processor.

As a computing device, the SoundClip card has a PCMIA II interface so users will be able to attach it to a PC or a telecommunications device and download recorded messages.

The Flashback will be available from retail outlets. The suggested retail price will be $199.

Home