i personally would stay away from those types of machines, but if you are kinda set on that sort of option then i would go for something like roland or tascam gear. however i would recommend just buying an 8 input soundcard if you can and downloading some software to try that perhaps is cracked or perhaps not. those hardware multitrackers are quite tedious to work on, and aren't so intuitive. if you are beyond bedroom recording i would seriously recommend moving to dp, pt or cb for recording. protools is m-audio compatible (as much as i don't personally like the sound of m-audio sound cards) you can get 8 i/o for about what you want to spend and with the card you will get protools le which will allow 28ch of recording, plus midi and some plugins. plus you usually get reason adapted and abelton live as well.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProFire2626.html