Single Point of Failure.

Yesterday, on Twitter, I asked for suggestions on a voice recorder for use on car trips. I tend to drive a lot by myself and I think out loud, which is really just talking to yourself, and tends to keep other motorists away. I have a phone that has a voice recorder function on it, but it's limited to 1 minute. It's really only meant for short notes, and since it takes 9 clicks (I checked) to record a voice memo, it's not really usable in the car. I'm a distracted enough driver as it is. I don't need the additional mess of playing with my phone en route. So, I was thinking of a decent, not top-of-the-line, but serviceable, one-button or voice activated voice recorder, that I could use while on the road. I figure at least a few other tweeps might have had some experience with them, so I put it out to the twitterverse.  I got about 4 or 5 answers back.  Every single one was, "Use your smartphone." 

I am not, and have never been a fan of all-in-one solutions. I remember when some of the first MFDs (Multi-Function Devices) came out.  Then you could scan/print/copy/fax... all from one machine.  It was a nice idea for small business owners, but the bundled convenience came with a price.  The scans were dirty and low-res, as were the copies.  Printing was horribly slow, and faxing was hit or miss.  What you got in convenience, you lost in quality. These things have improved over time, of course, but I still see the same pattern today. Specialized machines do their job very well, but multi-taskers tend to do things poorly. Jack of all trades, master of none.

In the case of the voice recorder, when you have a phone, camera, gps, voice memo and internet device, etc. if the phone breaks, you still have the rest, but if you do everything from your phone, then when that goes South, as mine has in the past, you lose all of that functionality. It creates a single point of failure. We strive to avoid this in our complex enterprise systems, so why do we accept it with our phones? I would rather have the relatively minor inconvenience of carrying around a small series of devices, than putting all my eggs in one basket, and losing everything in one move.

So... can anyone recommend a voice recorder?

Thanks,
-David.