Sony ICD-U50 (256 MB, 125 Hours) Handheld Digital Voice Recorder

I asked for a voice recorder as a birthday gift and my husband got me this one. It was among the more expensive ones out there but unfortunately we both immediately regretted this purchase. I'm an electrical engineer and this product is one of the least user-friendly devices I've owned. What product isn't plug and play these days?! you have to install a software in order to read the files off of this device. It also doesn't work work with MAC (which is what I use most of the time). I installed the player on my PC at work and it's impossible to figure out how to convert the files to mp3 or something that other people can use without needing to install my player. Their website is also useless. This device belongs to the previous century..