fwiw, so far, my pda-based system has been rock-solid. I believe that the problems/quirkyness that plagued earlier versions of this concept were rooted in the need to use innovative solutions such as card splitter interfaces and external hard drives to obtain sufficient storage. With the advent of 4gb sd cards, this is a thing of the past.
Further, the current os for these pdas has proven itself to be quite robust. A great feature/requirement is the need to perform a hard reboot before initiating the pdaudio software. This causes the pda to load ONLY the core factory-installed programs and not whatever else one's installed on the system since purchase and, knock on wood, has allowed mine to perform quite reliably so far. Another development that's def. helped is the relatively recent availability of faster processors for these pdas, which now allows for far more worry-free 24/96 recording.
Finally, a note on durability -- I carry mine around with me daily in a soft case and it's behaved quite will. I've read reviews in which the reviewer was instructed to drop the axim onto a concrete floor from 10', did so repeatedly and found it suffered no ill effects. I'm not so brave, but . . . .