The manufacturers seem to be pushing a lot of "field recording"
devices lately, bus and/or battery-operated. I guess this is to get
people excited enough to go out and do multitrack recordings of
vanishing indigenous tribal rituals. You know, it's a nice dream, but
how many of us have had portable digital recording capability for
several years already and never did serious field recording?

I've taken my minidisc recorders out several times and did "field
recording," including a lot of wind interfering with my recordings of
sidewalk players. Conversely, I've had good results with stealth
concerts, but geez, it's not very social to stand silently in the same
position at a three-hour show. I've also had an Mbox for two years and
realized soon enough that setting that up in public view with a
Powerbook and Oxygen8 to make beats is insane without a heavily-armed
bodyguard. Where I live you don't let anybody know you're packing a
laptop, let alone a whole recording system!

I've done enough "record anywhere" sessions and can tell you there is
a lot of noise pollution out there that you don't want in your music.
OK, so what's the hype about bus and battery power? And what technical
compromises are there to run everything off low-power DC?