Recording Chinese Lectures: Recording Device & Speech to Text Query

[tongtaitai]

Hi!

I'm about to start a chinese medicine degree course at BUCM (taught in Chinese), and am concerned that I won't be able to keep up with note taking in class. Does anyone have any tips or information on the following:

1) Recommendations for digital recording devices e.g. using ipod, or Olympus/Sony devices to record lectures. I currently have access to an 20GB Photo iPod, but would be ready to purchase an Olympus D-50 Digital Voice Recorder or similar if this gets the job done better.

2) Speech to text software - I have no experience of this sort of software, so any help would be very much appreciated. I'm looking for something that would be able to to take the recording of my lectures (given by various teachers), and turn it into text.

Thanks in advance,

Angharad

Edit:

Please see the following:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=120726#post120726

-Wushijiao