I brought a Sony minidisk MZ-NH700 for myself in 2006 (actually got 2 cos they were so cheap!) also a good Sony stereo microphone ECM-MS907. It produces excellent recordings.
I have also experimented and built up a binaural microphone using 2 old SUN microphone electret inserts. These get placed just infront of my ears. This is great for recording unobtrusively and produce again excellent results even when powered by the minidisk itself. The realism of the resultant recordings is amazing.
