Russ - I had overlooked that unit since my window shopping has been oriented towards something that I can use with the Soundcraft board at the Opera House.
Looks like a good unit to catch live performances on multi-track, although I would agree with one of the reviewers on Musician's Friend that sending stuff to the computer post-fader will probably give you some unwanted peaks and valleys in a track when you go to mix it down later.
Kent seems to want something to hold tracks to play back as accompaniment for live performance, so having a unit with an on-board hard disk could be the easiest thing.
As with many questions in the music world, you have to consider how many pieces you want to carry around, what you actually want to do today, and what kind of flexibility you want to meet future needs.
Kent, at Balfa camp this year, I noticed a couple of people with the "Edirol R-9" portable recording recorders. I don't know anything about them, other than the sweetwater link shown above. And the fact that they want $400 for this thing. At a lower cost, my buddy Randy gets pretty good results with his iriver portable MP3 recorder and a good mic.
Good luck Kent and please let us know where you wind up on this deal.
One more thing about the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire - it has a two-track in connection, so you play your prerecorded tracks back through a device connected to that input, send that device to the main mix, and use the other channels for the members of your live band. The 2-track input is a standard RCA stereo pair.