After ordering the product. I read loads of reviews on the net most of them poor.I thought I had made a huge mistake.Then it arrived I plugged it in and hey presto It works perfectly,I had to alter the Microphone levels on my computer a bit of trial and error for about 5 minutes ,But after that the sound is superb the quality is great the songs sound crisper once they are transferred. Yes it is made of plastic but aren't most products these days,And yes you have to transfer the songs in real time, so what we had to in the old days ,when we recorded them on to tape in the first place. All Iknow is it works for me.
Beware you need to download itunes for this to work properly and even then it doesnt seem to export consisently - and when you've just waited an hour and a half to record a tape, it is a tad annoying. I don't even want itunes I just want the file on my computer! grrr!
The build is poor (all plastic) and the software is pants!
You'd be better off buying a cheaper walkman, downloading some free recording software and buying an rca cable to make recordings. Very disappointed!