Recorders are better value at any price point. The cheap ones (except for the very nasty one-piece toys) are made with better quality control than whistles at the same price - manufacturing volume counts, and many more recorders than whistles are produced. High-end hand-finished recorders are also better for the same money (several hundred years of design experience helps), though in this category you can always get a lemon with either. And no whistle matches the very best hand-made recorders.

Jack, while you're technically correct about different locations of finger holes and fingering, I think your comment copied above states what Foolestroupe was getting at when he wrote

[a recorder is] a more "intensely designed" instrument than the more "natural built" whistle

I must admit that the sounds of school children learning recorders can be extremely offputting but those experiences ought not be regarded as defining the capabilities of instruments. I no longer have the LP record of David Munroe (? I can no longer recall the correct spelling) playing recorders and just about everything else that was a renaissance woodwind but his ability knocked any notions the instrument was not as good as a tin whistle very much into a cocked hat.

I also suspect some of us are confusing preferences for particular styles with preferences for particular players or instruments. There's no doubt that James Galway knows his way around what most English speakers would call a "concert flute" but he just can't cut the mustard when compared to Matt Molloy playing what the Irish call a concert flute. And having heard James Galway playing a tin whistle (I've no idea of the brand) I'd not give him more than busking money by comparison with Mary Bergin. This may indicate my preference for the styles of the players who are ensconced firmly in the particularly Irish traditional music styles over James' formal 'classical' training in style.

These comparisons seem (to me) to be analagous to the comparisons people are making in the examples above. I've heard superb playing of Persian music (in the modes of which you'd be familiar) on the same sort of "ordinary" recorder used by better students. And Irish tunes as well, with all the appropriate decorations.

It's more often the player who is limited rather than the instrument.

Cheers, Rowan