THIS year marks the 50th birthday of the humble audio cassette tape - the medium that revolutionised the way people listened to music.

Invented by Philips, the compact audio cassette became a tremendous success because the Dutch giant allowed other manufacturers to use the technology for free. Four decades later, the same charitable attitude made MP3 the world's favourite digital music format.

Long before digital downloads, iPods and iPhones, the compact cassette made music portable. Kitted out with a Sony Walkman (remember them? If not,ask your dad) anyone could enjoy music on the move. In the 1980s, sales of cassettes overtook vinyl records to the anguish of audiophiles who insist the sound simply isn't as good.

These days no one listens to music on cassettes, but anyone over 30 probably still has a collection gathering dust somewhere at home.

If you're a hoarder like me you probably can't bring yourself to throw your cassettes away but, be honest, can't remember the last time you listened to them. Indeed, how many people actually still own a cassette player? For a device that was once ubiquitous I can't remember the last time I saw someone listening to a Walkman.

So thank goodness for the Honestech USB cassette player all-in-one home digitising solution.

On first acquaintance, the contents of the Honestech box looks like an anachronism. Open it up and inside you'll find... a silver plastic personal cassette player.

But take a closer look and you'll find a clue as to what makes the Honestech box a bit special - a mini USB port.

As well as the player the box also contains a USB cable (no need to hunt around in your box of computer "spares"), a stereo lead and a CD containing Honestech's Audio Recorder 3.0 software.

The cassette player appears as a standard USB audio device under Windows. It runs on its own batteries so there's no need for a separate power supply.

Recording a cassette is simplicity itself. Fire up Audio Recorder 3.0, select the cassette player from the drop down and press play. You'll need to fiddle about with the sound levels to make sure the music is captured without distortion but a neat twin VU graphic makes this a relatively straightforward job. It's a good idea to play a loud section of your tape to avoid clipping problems (when the music distorts) before you begin.

The player is an auto reverse deck so you can leave it running.

Audio Recorder creates a digital file of your cassette tape which can be split into individual tracks, renamed and reworked (to remove hiss or rumble). The files can be imported into iTunes or burned to a CD. The software will try to detect the gaps in your cassettes but this depends on the quality of the music.  Old tapes with lots of hiss tend to confuse it.

I wasn't expecting great things of the cassette player - it feels a bit flimsy - but the results were very acceptable. Being picky, I could detect some rumble but the software did a good job of cleaning up the sound file and, with the audio cable supplied, I also had the option of hooking up to the cassette player on my hi-fi.

Costing less than £40, this is good value and is an excellent way to listen to your precious music collection without wearing old tapes out.

* For more details see honestech.com