Think Before You Leap

About a month ago we saw an ad for a 40ish looking radio that had the old fashion round dial that not only was a radio but it played LP records, CDs, and cassettes. Wait! Not only that, it also had the ability to record onto a CD what ever you are playing.

I had to have one! I had a bunch of prerecorded cassettes I accumulated that I thought were going to waste because of modern technology. With this new gadget that is disguised to look like an old fashion radio I could bring my old cassettes back to life by transferring onto to CDs. HAH!

The machine cost about $200. With an in-store “come-on” coupon we bought it for $160. I took it out of the box and sat it up and turned on the radio part. The music came in faintly and we couldn’t seem to tune it exactly on a station. That may be because we had not yet strung up a wired antenna. Then, I turned it off. It turned itself back on. It would not let itself be turned off. Also, I noted that the machine was unresponsive to any of the other buttons I pressed – the buttons were frozen in place.

I counted the cassettes I had plans of transferring. There were 60. Hmmm – I thought there were much more. Of course, not every song on an album is worth keeping, I think if I recorded on an average of 2 songs per cassette I would have 120 songs that I paid $160 for, which averages out to be $1.33 each. I could download the same songs from i-tunes for 99₵ each. Think!

We took it back and said it didn’t work. When the clerk asked if we would like to exchange it for another one, I plainly said, “Nope!”