A casual chat with Olympus Australia today revealed that their middle dictaphone in their current product range, the DS-3300 has been put to rest and is no more, it has ceased to be.
For the eager Olympus price watchers out there, which is probably just me, you would have noticed that in their price changes on 1st February 2009 Olympus set the RRP of the DS-3300 to the same as the DS-2300, this was to run out their remaining stock.
This now leaves only two digital dictaphones in the current Olympus voice range, the low end DS-2300 and the top end, new design with new software DS-5000 & DS-5000iD models.
My suspicion is that the DS-2300’s days are also now numbered. We have already seen the DS-2400 on the Olympus America website for some time now, as soon as that arrives in Australia we will see the end of the DS-2300 and it’s accompanying AS-2300 digital transcription kit. When in 2009 will that be? No specific date as yet but our guess would be within the next three months so Q2 2009.
Also discontinued was the VN-3100PC, no tears shed over that decision. It was not one of my favourite voice recorders. We are still waiting patiently for the new VN-3500PC and VN-5500PC note takers to appear.