One piece of equipment that may not seem essential to many people is the dictation machine. Although speech recognition software continues to evolve, it is not without pitfalls. Executives who need to draft letters, memos, and reports are best off dictating the copy and recording it, since speaking is much faster than writing and can be done while performing other tasks. The type of equipment chosen depends on the preferences of the dictators, number of users, frequency of use, and budget. Some dictation equipment uses cassette tapes, while more modern versions record digitally and even use a phone system for recording. However the audio is recorded, this file is then processed by another employee, who transcribes the audio into a written document and saves, emails, or prints it.