If you’re one of those folks who depend on a tiny handheld tape recorder for your note-taking, be you a student or in business, then you’ll be ecstatic to hear about the new line of personal recorders out from Panasonic, the RR series.

There are four models in the RR series, the RR-US510, RR-US550, RR-US570, and the RR-US590, which retail from $92-$160 depending on where you shop.  They offer various sizes of on board memory, with the smallest being 128MBs megs for just over 34 hours of recording, all the way up to a whopping 2GB for 526 hours.  Before you grab your calculators, I’ll save you some time–yes, that IS 24 solid DAYS of record time.

Each comes with a voice-activated recording feature and all can record in MP3 mode for easy, clear playback later.  They offer a maximum battery life of 45 hours and can even, unless I misunderstand, offer a limited directional record capability in “zoom mode”.

Admittedly, unless you have a very specific use for the handheld recorder, you may not be terribly interested.  But for people who take a lot of notes, this  could be a downright godsend.

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