I'm trying to buy a microphone that can cannect to a PC and record stuff. It needs to be able to sit in the middle of a table somewhere and be able to pick up voices from probably 3-5 metres away easily and with decent clarity.

Any ideas? I've been looking around and all I can say is I wish we had Radio Shack!

Condenser mic is what your after. I dont know of any cheap ones but jaycar will have something

Thats Eds - Jaycar had one for about $44, going to grab it and see what it's like..ta.

any mic u run through the mic in on your sound card is going to sound crap, basically becuase the mic pre-amp in your pc is pretty average.

depends what you are actualy using it for i guess.

My guess is its just vocal stuff, maybe like a meeting or something, which would sound pretty good. Thats just my guess tho :P

You could pay a couple of hundred for a condenser mic for your PC and it's still going to sound s***. I once made the mistake of getting a Sony one for around $250 and it was terrible.

If you just need it for transcripts or something similar (nothing professional) a crappy $10 desktop mic from microsoft will work.

http://shop.record.org.il/Images/apex435shock.jpg
+
http://www.foxtrot.com.br/produtos/foto45p71.jpg

It's just going to be for voice - that being said I don't want it to sound s***ty either...I guess I'll find out in a week or so when it arrives - eep!