For a long time, I was anti-voice recorder.
Handwritten notes, I believed, were good enough when it came to writing journalistic articles. They forced me to focus on the interview (rather than drift off, confident in the fact that the voice recorder would catch all the boring stuff) and the batteries never died on a notepad.
The thing is, a while ago I ran into an issue where a source told me something which turned out to be completely false. I had my notes to prove it, but a voice recording would have been a lot better. In addition, my most recent writing assignment is a Q&A, and you kind of need exact wording for one of those.
So, since I pawned my old voice recorder a long time ago and wasn't ready to buy a new one, I instead opted to buy a $10 app on iTunes. Record Phone Calls by the Blue Square Group, in fact.
Can I just say, it's really awesome? And I didn't have to spend a boatload on a new recorder, and all the attachments necessary to hook it up to my phone.
Sweet!
(photo by Rayparnova)