Hi guys!

Some of you may remember my question about the network I am going to implement at my father-in-laws. (see here). I’ve pretty much got the whole networking idea down, but yesterday my father-in law came up with something new.

The situation is the following:
He is a doctor, and always speaks his conclusions into a dictaphone. You know, one of those small tape recorders. He then hands over this tape to his secretary, which then types his conclusions into a document. For this she uses one of those dictaphone tape players with headphones, and a foot pedal with which she can control the playing/stopping of the tape player.

My father-in-law would like to see this digitized. Basically, he would need a digital dictaphone, which should record his voice no longer on tape, but in a digital file. The idea then is to email that file to his secretary, which should then again type out that entire file into a document.

Now… my question is: does anyone of you know which hardware would be up to this? Finding a dictaphone which records to .mp3 or .wav is probably not all that hard. (even though I have no idea where to look and/or which brands are any good, so tips are welcome!) But the real problem lies with the secretary. I’m guessing there probably is software out there somewhere which can play such a file, and can also be controlled by a foot pedal (via USB?), but where? Headphones are easily enough connected to nowadays PC’s so that’s not a problem.

Can anyone of you point me in the right direction? Which hardware should I buy? Or software? Any help is most welcome, because I have really no idea where to look for this...

Thanks!