cassette players and walkman

I bought this walkman based on the recommendations here on Amazon. Unfortunately, I now disagree with all the favorable feedback.
First, the controls are totally counterintuitive. Instead of a "play" button, there's a "direction switch" button, which happens to also work as "play" (I actually had to look through the instructions to figure out how to play a tape!!)

Next, the controls are on the front, and are just small buttons which tend to get pressed by mistake if the unit happens to be in a pocket. Terrible design, unintuitive, and forces you to have to look at the unit in order to do anything - you can't operate it by feel as the buttons are too small to feel with your finger.

Finally, maybe I got a lemon, but in 3 of the total of 6 times I've used the unit so far, during operation (both radio and tape) I would hear a loud beep, and the the unit would either turn off or switch directions on my tape - for no reason. The unit was lying untouched on a flat surface at the time. No idea what was going on, and particularly annotying while trying to listen to a meditation tape.

It is true that the unit is very light, which is a big plus, and the sounds seems to be decent. But I'd happily sacrifice the sound a bit for faultless and intuitive operation... Very disappointing.

This is the worst set of controls I have ever seen on a radio/cassette player. Good thing it only takes one battery -- it will inevitably be left on. DO NOT buy this unless you're about 14. I hate it very much.

I agree with the other positive reviews, here I'll just point out a few things missing from the reviews I read and the product description. I bought this unit as an exercise peripheral for listening to lecture tapes.

1. There's an attachment point for a wrist strap, but oddly enough I didn't see the 5 cent nylon wrist strap in the package. I passed a very slender nylon pull tie through it and then locked on a metal key ring. I can use that to attach the device to gear.

2. It comes with a very lightweight unpadded nylon jacket with a belt clip. The clip is worthless (slides off a belt) but I threaded a thin nylon climbing belt through the jacket and it's easy to carry this way.

3. It has a remote with an somewhat longish cord. Looks promising if one keeps the cord bundled up safely. I used another nylon tie for that.

4. It's made in Malaysia (I think that's where SONY's better quality stuff is made now).

5. It's VERY light -- feels empty. That's good.

6. The included headphones are not appropriate for exercise. Most people use earbuds or the ultralight over the head earphones (same style as in the poorly reviewed SONY sport). So budget another $10-15 for exercise headphones if you don't have any on hand.

Seems to be about the best available device for exercise on the market nowadays.