The documentation to get started is sketchy at best. I almost took the unit back and thought it was flawed because I could not get it to download to the recorder. Ripping from a CD is fast, and downloading is also fast,  but it appears that battery life might be a problem since it shows  considerable use after a couple of hours. I also have a mini disk player  and will not throw this away since it is more flexible in repeating songs  and the disks aren't that big that they are a pain to carry. In essence,  the price may be a bit high, but the quality is great and the unit is nice  to carry. I am not sorry that I bought it since it is nice to download  songs right from the net. Jim