I bought a Sony MD recorder a couple of years ago and soon discovered that you needed a degree in computer science just to switch it on. After failing to record several things I consigned it to a drawer where it languishes still. Needless to say I will not be buying any more Sony equipment - ease of use is my no. 1 requirement for electronic/digital gear.
As a sort of stop-gap, until something better comes along, I tried using an Olympus voice recorder with the Sony ECM-MS907 microphone that I bought to go with the MD recorder (that just has an on/off switch which even I can operate!). The recorder takes a 64 Mb SD card which can hold 22 hours of recordings (!). It is also possible to download the files onto a hard disk, via a USB cable, and convert them to WAV files. Obviously the quality isn't brilliant but, by coincidence, a friend recently leant me some reel-to-reel tapes that he made on a Ferguson recorder back in the 60s - the quality is at least as good as that (much better than I thought I had any right to expect).
At least now I have a personal record of some of the great singing that I have heard during 2004.