Anahata,

Good points.

The last was just a wish list. A burner about the size of a CD would be fine if I could clip it to my belt and walk around with it.

I agree that the battery is the problem. I might be willing to deal with a separate battey pack about the size of a laptop battery.

There's proprietary and then there's proprietary. I like WAV simply because of it universality in the Wintel world, it's lossless storage, and the ability to do fast transfers from CD to hard drive if needed.

Actually, the thing I want already exists. Almost. It is called a laptop. I've used one for field recordings, but it is just too big and too fragile. For pure recording I don't need and don't want to pay for the screen, the processor, the MS software, and the gewgaws.