I need to record a phone call made with a home phone (NOT cell-phone) to MP3. What is the best way to connect my phone to the PC in a way that I can record it? Thanks

Don't know of any way to do that directly. You might just want to check the legality of recording a phone conversation without informing the caller. I believe you could get some kind of microphone device that would attach to the handpiece of the phone and plug into the microphone jack of your soundcard. Windows sound recorder can capture it as a wav file and you will then need a wav/mp3 converter. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

As Richard says there are legal implications to recording a telephone conversation without the other persons knowledge. That's why when you look at the small print in the terms of business for these companies using call centers it says something along the lines that calls will be recorded for training purposes. Its a legal requirement. If you are planning to use a telephone conversation to implicate someone, whether in a civil court or a criminal court, you may find it inadmissible. Comes under the category of telephone tapping. I believe both UK and US law is similar in this respect. I did inadvertently record a telephone conversation once. This was through a voice modem working as an answering machine. I picked up the phone just as the answering machine was going through it introduction and ended up recording the entire conversation. Stuart

In the State of Georgia it is legal to tape a call, if one of the parties is aware of the recording. I believe under this circumstance it IS admissible as evidence. If NEITHER are aware (tapping the call) it is illegal unless of course it is a government agency with a court's permission. being a Brit, I know that Steve Penk made multiple prank calls on Capital FM and recorded all of them, so either it's illegal and he should have gone to jail, or it's perfectly fine. Still might not be admissable as evidence though.

Thanks for the advices, but I will be recording it with the other person's consent, so there is no legal problems involved.

I don't know where the original poster is located, but here is one thought. Since the loss in popularity, or need, of amateur radio "phone patches" sometimes you can pick up an amateur "patch" pretty cheap. You can read the "swap shop" lists at qrz.com, or qth.com, as other places, maybe find one. These were designed to go across a phone line, provide audio in/out to interface with a radio transmitter/receiver. You could then hookd those in/out connections to your sound card. There is of course many softwares available to accomplish sound card recordings. If you are REAL handy, I did also find at one point, a conversion to make a "patch" out of a standard POST telephone. Probably in the quickest and dirtiest mode, all you really probably need is a radio shack audio transformer, and a couple of "coupling capacitors" to isolate the phone line. That, with an old instrument/wall cable that you can cut into, and a wall jack, is probably all you need.

The suggestion by Richard59 is the cheapest and easiest. You can probably get am inexpensive microphone that attaches to a phone by suction at Radio Shack. If it's a long conversation you will probably need a different recording program than the Windows Sound recorder. I think it's limited to about 1 minute. Checkout CoolEdit, I think they have a trial version that works very well.