I have been using my minidisk machine for a number of years and just love it. I learn all my songs using it, ie. getting the music down, learning the tune and then the words.
I have even used it to record myself at home in my own room, and then created a CD master, and two of the final songs have been issued on a commercial CD in the UK. My wife has done the same with some concertina recordings.
I only have a Sharp MD-MT290H recorder, that I bought from Minidisco of California. I dump down to CD using our Tascam CD-RW4U cd player/recorder. I have not even got into using the computer (we run a Mac) to edit or clean-up, etc..
I had a terrible shock last week when for some reason my machine would record but NOT write any Table of Contents - I was beside myself!
I tried again the next day - it was fine; I think it may just have been the cold (it has been cold here in Massachusetts recently). The only other time I have had a similar situation was one year at Pinewoods Camp when it was very hot & humid.
I looked at Minidisco to see what they are now selling - and there is not that many Minidisks out there any more - all mp3 players!But at least they sell blank disks in bulk.

Tim Radford