Evil Taper -
FWIW, a buddy of mine uses the R-1 for taping. he said there IS a Hold switch on the R-1, and i just took a gander at the Edirol R-1 manual (.pdf file), and it does have the Hold switch to help prevent any accidents while recording.
also, my friend uses regular alkaline AA batteries, and he never has a problem taping 2.5 hrs. having said that, i would imagine if you used Lithium Ion AA batteries, you'd have well over 3 hours worth of recording power.
oh, and he also told me that 4 GB CF cards work. although, there is the 2 GB limit (right at 2 hours and 5 minutes at 24/44.1) for recording, which someone in the "Microtrack"real world experiences" thread said Edirol was working on a fix for in a future firmware release.
hope this is of some help. happy taping.