CallRec for Palm

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on November 06, 2008

CallRec is a midsize piece of commercial software that makes clear recordings of your notes-to-self and phone calls, and has enough options for tweaking the recording quality to cut out most background noise and adjust for storage space. The clean, understandable interface provides screen-touch buttons to start, stop, and replay recordings, though you can also initiate and end sessions by pressing the Treo's side button. CallRec names recordings with a time stamp, but it's easy to rename the file in the File menu, and to organize entries by file name or duration.

The preferences usefully track the available space on your memory card and convert that into how much recording time you have left. It's always possible to reduce a recording's file size by dropping its quality or compressing the file, though if you're a voice-documentation enthusiast, you may be happiest leaving the settings intact and purchasing more memory instead.

In our tests, recordings of voice memos and phone conversations both sounded clear, though CallRec didn't capture the first few seconds of my call after we initiated the voice capture. While the program records fine while other applications run, there's no trigger key to launch the recording independently of the CallRec app. That made recording incoming phone calls a much more belated process, and a more conspicuous one, by the time the program began recording. Top-secret documenters better practice launching CallRec quickly and noiselessly with their fingertips.

CallRec is useful for turning PDAs into tape recorders for capturing notes, instructions, meetings, and phone calls, though we wish we could enable the program once and use a hot key every time after to launch the recorder. Files are conveniently exportable through Bluetooth, e-mail, messenger, or beam.