October 17, 2005 Olympus is to release a pair of handheld voice recorders later this month that are likely to become hot property for journalists, in legal offices and in other professional roles where voice recording and transcription are the primary focus. The great thing about the new Voice-Treks is that the unit clips apart exposing a USB connection that is supported under the USB Storage class so transferring files doesn’t require drivers for Mac or Windows. Both can play WMA and MP3 files and the larger unit will record 36 hours at the highest quality setting, making it an ideal voice recording tool – one AAA battery offers 11 hours of recording.

The new V-40 and V-50 will go on sale October 28 with a price of JPY20,000 for the 512MB model, and 30,000 yen for the1GB model. See the Japanese (in Japanese) web site for the products here.