Sorry that I didn't get back to you on this sooner- I'd stopped reading this thread when it became as OS/platform discussion.
I don't know that I would describe myself as the "expert" in anything, in fact: I'm just fearless enough to rip into stuff without thinking about it too much. (;-)
The Fostex standalone HDRs are really very easy to learn, and you can be productive on them within just a couple of hours of opening the box. I'm not exaggerating: if you can print 2-track to cassette, you can run the basic operations on these guys and get work done, right away.
The huge advantage they offer over computer recording is their simplicity. They allow you to record and reproduce sound, do very basic editing (head/tail cropping, track splitting, cut and paste), and _that's it_. There are no ratholes to go down in trying to install third-party software drivers, or handle compatibility issues... You just plug them in and go. They do what they do, they do _only_ what they do, and they do it very well. Period.
I'm now in the process of incorporating a DAW in my setup, because I want to do more sophisticated editing than can be done on the box itself, and because I want to be able do to backups of my data in a manner that is more familiar to me. But it was important to me to get the ability to record and get work done _first_: thus, the standalone HDR was the only real choice for me, personally. Now, and only now, I can start fighting the DAW wars. And I'm frankly not looking forward to it very much, even though I've decided to purchase a ready-to-go turnkey unit from Soundchaser. I see the HDR and the DAW as complementary, rather than exclusive. I will always *track* to the HDR, because it is stone reliable by comparison, and then perhaps I'll do post-processing on the DAW (Gawd willing and the creek don't rise...). If the DAW takes a dump, and apparently that is painfully common, I can then fly the unmunged basics back down from the HDR, or restore them from offline backup.
Call me paranoid if you like. The only caveat with any digital recorder, be it DAW or standalone HDR: back up early, back up often. The Fostex machines make it a little harder to do backups well than their advertising materials would lead you to believe. The hot setup for a standalone backup methodology is probably a SCSI Zip or Jaz drive, or perhaps a tape drive (I haven't tried that yet). Other drive types (especially CD-ROM) have to come from a very limited list of supported drives, as I found out to my woe after buying an unsupported drive. Frankly, I'm primarily building the DAW so that I can fly the data down via ADAT lightpipe and use my already-existing computer backup mechanisms to make backup/archival copies.
The standalone HDRs make it a little more difficult to lose data than a computer-based DAW (since they don't crash as often), but only a little. In both cases, once it's gone, _it is gone_. I've never seen a reel of analog tape develop a bad directory block and become unuseable (;-), or an analog recorder destroy an entire tune when the power fails in mid-take, so I'm overly cautious here because of my background...
Hope this helps. If possible, lay hands on many examples of each before buying, regardless of whether you choose HDR or DAW. I had it easy: I simply wanted a tapeless tape machine with as few bells and whistles as possible, and that's what I got for my nickel. IMNSHO, it is easier to make an optimal decision when you know precisely what you want. Your mileage may vary...
guhlenn
