I have the ICF-C273L Dream Machine and it's absolutely ridiculous as an alarm clock/radio.

The process of setting the alarms, and the time is so counter-intuitive that it defies belief that any serious corporation could have launched it onto the market!

I suspect it's all to do with cost of manufacture - it's obviously cheaper to cut back on buttons and rely on 'intelligence' in the machine to allow functions to be completed. For example my old reliable Philips radio had a button for every function - so to select the alarm type you simply used the 'alarm' buttons - up for radio, down for alarm and in the middle for off (one for each alarm) - simple and straightforward.

This has a smaller number of buttons many of which have two or three functions depending on the order you press them in. For example at one point you have 'alarm' and 'sound; both displayed - one is solid and one is flashing - you then use 'time adjust' to select the one you want (the flashing one). you use 'tuning' +/- to adjust the time! etc etc

It usually takes about 4 goes to get the correct alarm time, alarm type and the correct station set - I've not had to rely on resetting it when very tired or a bit drunk :) but I suspect when I do it'll defeat me.

£26 wasted!

Their on-line help is useless too! Their manual entitled 'setting the time and alarm on your .....' actually doesn't tell you how to set the time!!.

I'm sure it all makes sense in Sony-land but in the real world there are much better machines out there for the same or less money!