digital recording devices

[dep]

greetings, boys and girls!

i'm embarking on a little project that will involve a lot of interviews, 
which i hope to make using one of the small, nifty digital recorders of 
the sort made by sony and olympus (i have one of the little olympus 
devices). these can be dumped to computer via usb port. problem is, 
they seem to save everything in their own, proprietary, file format. 
the format varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but in each case 
is compressed. the machines also come with windows-only software, which 
allows the user to convert to .wav, which is of course much larger.

so what i'm looking for is either a linux application which can 
manipulate these proprietary formats, a utility that runs under linux 
which will simply convert the files to something that i can then 
manipulate, or a manufacturer of these little recording devices which 
employs a standard format or has software which runs under linux.

anybody have any wisdom to impart?

(this whole thing would be a lot easier if it were about five years from 
now, when we'll be able to dump the files into the computer and save 
them and, by selecting some option type in the names of the various 
people speaking, keying to their individual voices, and seconds later 
have a nicely identified transcript of the file!)

anyway, thanks in advance for any information anyone here might be able 
to impart.
-- 
dep

good, fast, cheap: pick two.