I’ve owned  a Zoom H4n recorder for about a month now and have to say I’m still pleased with it.  I use it for nature sounds and eventually want to start doing interviews with out.  You can buy it now for roughly $300 (lucky you, when I bought it, it was $350) at Amazon, but there are plenty of bundles on Ebay (where I bought it) the will include extras like a corded remote , extra memory card, and a mini-tripod for the same price.  The only disadvantage is you have to wait a week instead of the 2-day amazon delivery.  The Video I put on youtube shows the menu structure and gives a general overview.

At the risk of sounding old, I get excited with objects like these:  for $300 you’re getting the equivilent of technology that would’ve cost $1000 to $5000(and this is being conservative) 20 years ago at the dawn of digital recordings (you know, the audio CD area).  Technology has removed another barrier to getting your voice out there, an idea which is worthy of a whole separate post.

Here are some recoded clips made with the onboard mic’s:

rainwater

crickets

Rio Grande bosque area