After ten years of faithful service, my trusty Palm (a Zire 72) has malfunctioned and no longer does all the things it used to do.

For the most part, those functions have over time been replaced by other tools (mainly the mobile phone), but the one use I still had for it was as an audio recorder.  Very handy when you're the secretary in a meeting and have to produce accurate minutes, or record a conversation for later review (such as you might have with a relative to find out what they know about your mutual family history).

My current mobile phone's voice recorder is not suitable for the task, as it stops recording when another function (alarm, incoming text, phone call...) pops up.  Most inconvenient.

On the Palm I could save the audio files on an SD card, which then made it very easy to transfer to a computer for backup, sharing with others, and playback if required (though for reviewing meeting minutes playback on the Palm was preferable).

So now I'm in the market for a new digital audio recorder, and thought I would ask around for advice before making a purchase.

What features do you find most useful?  Which features do you find not worth worrying about?

I would love to hear feedback from anyone who has been using such a device.

Kind Regards,
Wendy