A basic computer mic will be fine. You can get one that talks USB, or you can get one that plugs into the mic input on your PC. USB is overkill - the basic ones are usually cheaper and the same quality. Every PC that can play sound will also have a mic input. Usually there are three headphone-type connectors next to each other, where one is mic in, one is line in (eg. from hi-fi), and one is line out (eg. to hi-fi or headphones).

Voice can be *massively* compressed. Music MP3s usually want to be at least 128Kb to be decent quality, which amounts to about 2 minutes per MB of storage. Voice, you can get away with as little as 16Kb and hear what they're saying - 32Kb would be quite acceptable to accurately record their voice, so 8 minutes per MB of storage.

WMV (Windows Mediaplayer format) is usually a bit better than that, although you're more at the mercy of what MS decide they want to let you do with your files today. Also you can often play MP3s on newer CD and DVD players, but I don't know of any CD/DVD players that'll do WMV.

Software-wise, I use a free program called Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.org) to do all my recording. It's a little more complex to set up so that it can write to MP3, but it comes with full instructions. As previously mentioned, you might as well save directly to MP3 (or WMV or whatever) - you don't need to save as WAV and do the conversion manually afterwards. It's not the easiest program to drive though, so you might want to spend a few quid to get something that's more intuitive. SoundForge and Total Recorder are both decent bits of kit and reasonably priced. Or it's also worth checking PC magazine coverdisks - if you're lucky, they might be giving away a recording program (companies give them old versions to give away on coverdisks, in the hope that readers will upgrade to the newer paid-for version if they like it).

Graham.