The mini-sized cassette recorders are nice, because you can put them in your pocket. I once had the same problem with the pause button being set accidently, and lost 1 1/2 hours of meteor data (ouch!). Anyway, a piece if tape over the pause button solved that problem. Min-cassette are more expensive though. I payed about $55 for mine, but I wouldn't go back to regular size after being spoiled :-) GWG