I guess you never had a real digital recorder. Aside from the large space the Clip’s recordings take up, the Clip has a cheap mic and the recordings are noisy unless the player is very close to the speaker. A real digital recorder has many features for reducing noise during recording and/or playback, and a mic jack so an external mic can be used if the internal one doesn’t work well enough.
Since a decent digital voice recorder that can record in mp3 or wma at a user selectable bitrate with a mic jack and a microSDHC card slot is only around $50, I don’t see a need to suffer with the limitations of the Clip players for recording. I love my Clip+ players for playing music and podcasts, but hate using them as recorders. I’m talking about a recorder like this. With the card slot and using AAA batteries, your recording time is unlimited. This seems like the cheapest of the decent recorders with a card slot and usb connectivity. Sony also makes some nice low priced models with a card slot.
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1605&page=specs
