I love my little Olympus WS-310M (the WS--311M is the current model) digital voice recorder. It captures high quality audio in the WMA format for radio or online audio pieces. I can also download MP3 files into it, so it serves as my poor man's Ipod for traveling. The battery case pulls off, revealing a USB plug for direct connection to your desktop or laptop computer.
Some editing programs will not natively edit the WMA format, so you have to convert the files (I use a shareware program called Switch to do this). But higher end editing tools like Adobe Audition will import the files directly. Audio purists might not like that there is no way to control the record level manually, only the built-in ALC. But
I find that to almost never be a problem for interviews or nat sound.
One weakness...the battery door falls off easily. So, I keep a rubber band wrapped around mine.
Thanks to Mindy McAdams for recommending this particular recorder. As you can see from this week's New York Times photo, it has become popular with journalists on the campaign trail.
