Sorry I didn't reply sooner, but it didn't arrive until after the holiday. My first impression is good, but I also found a few other worthy alternatives. If you look at the links to the reviews I already posted, both the positives and the negatives are pretty accurate. Here's a more detailed review I found helpful:
http://www.gearwire.com/alesis-palmtrack-proreview.html
It's worth noting, the unit is actually made by Medeli Electronics in China and is private labelled by a few companies.
It's clearly an inexpensive unit with a plastic case, but for the price, I'm not disappointed. I haven't done much with it yet, but I did try a few things. When recording with the built-in mics, there is some loss of high and low end, but it sounds pretty good, especially for voice. I only did a quick check, but this weekend I'll try it to record some live music during a jam session, with both built-in and external mic. Recording from the line input was really quite good. I only tested it with my computer line output, and did not optimize the levels, but I was impressed with a quick test. I asked Alesis what the frequency response was for each input, and, to my surprise, they did not have the information. Regardless, for line-in recording, it will probably be adequate.
A few minor annoyances, some already mentioned in the reviews:
The display is small. Break out your reading glasses. Fortunately, the menu isn't hard to navigate.
It doesn't seem to remember any settings after you power it off. Depending on your settings, this can get tiresome. For example, if I play it through the aux input in my car, I have to turn off the internal speaker, otherwise I'll get feedback when not playing. I have to do this every time I cycle the power.
Other models you might want to consider:
The Zoom H2. This unit is a bit more expensive, maybe $130 to $170 street price, but has a lot more features. This also seems to be a very popular unit.
The Tascam DR-07 is another possibility.
There are also a whole range of choices from these companies with even more features at progressively higher cost.
To sum up, so far, I'm happy with the unit, but I'll let you know how it fares when I use it more. For the $49 I paid, I'm definitely satisfied, but if I had to pay closer to $100, I might consider the H2 for a little more.