I would get this:

Olympus LS-10

A good friend of mine has one. their wonderful!

(Dead Link Removed)

Make sure the dealer is verified as a good seller

Probably overkill in your situation, but quality is important to me. I have a portable rack i made and have it fitted with a 2 ch preamp and an Alesis ML9600. When i need to go where i dont have electricity i use a car battery custom fitted w a dc->ac inverter for remote recording of sfx etc.

Prob not what your looking for but thought id share it anyways

I can think of several but unfortunately well north of $300. I'm thinking HHB, Denon, Sony.

Maybe the Tascam DR-1 might be of interest, it's in your price range

http://www.tascam.com/catalogue;47,12.html

If you don't mind buying into technology that's on the way out, MiniDisc is a viable option for you too. You should be able to get one for next to nothing these days. Get a stockpile of blank discs while you can, and you'll be set for a long time. I've always been very happy with the results from the two Sony MiniDiscs I use for occasional 2-ch field recordings.

Good Luck!

Zoom H2 recorder uses a SD card but has a USB cable for download. Battery or AC adapter. Audiolines.com recon unit $129.00 but new about $160.00. These units come with small cards so best to figure you will need a larger card as well.

Don't worry about which card format it is. You can (and should any, just on general principle) get a cheap USB device that reads multiple formats.

Like one of these (had this one and my brother needed it):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000AKVHF/?tag=r06fa-20

In that case, SD storage would probably be ideal.

I guess I'm just still not sure what I'm dealing with between a 150-250 price range. Is it just basically audio quality? Anything else I should be looking out for?

Found this on Sweetwater...

http://www.sweetwater.com/c1006--Portable_Recorders

The zoom H2 for $179 looks like a good deal. Go for it. I did read a article in a magazine a while back, I think it was EQ and at that time they rated them they were more expensive.

Everything comes down in price the more the production goes up and supply starts to dwindle. Very likely the newer the design the better.

Yeah. that's probably what I'll end up getting, based on what I've read. Found a really cool site comparing various recording devices:

http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-sound-samples.html

Seems like the Zoom H2 is missing a bit of base and texture, but not enough to make me pay anymore money, given what I'm using it for.

Thanks everyone.