Widescreen

Widescreen Cinema (Harvard Film Studies)
$28.95
John Belton, historian and cinema guru at Rutgers University, has put together a very valuable reference in this book. It contains chapters on the development of the early widescreen processes; Cinerama, CinemaScope, 70mm Todd-AO, and others. Belton traces the geneology of widescreen imagery to art works predating the cinema by hundreds of years. This is the most thorough and accurate source of information in this field I've ever encountered. As a historical treatise, it is vastly superior to "Wide Screen Movies" by Carr and Hayes, which relies largely on the recollections of the authors, and contains numerous misstatements and inaccuracies.

Soft Neoprane Carrying Case for Magellan Roadmate 1470 4.7-inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator (Blue)
$9.99
MY HUSBAND WAS THRILLED TO DEATH WITH HIS MAGELLAN AND ALL THE STUFF THAT CAME WITH IT. HE HAS TO SHOW EVERYONE HE MEETS. ITS A PERFECT GIFT FOR ANYONE WHO IS ON THE ROAD A LOT...EXCELLENT SHIPPING BY THE WAY. ORDER IT AND IT WAS HERE FAST

Up (Single Disc Widescreen) (2009)
$28.99
Actors: Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai, John Ratzenberger, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson Directors: Bob Peterson, Pete Docter Writers: Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Thomas McCarthy Producers: Andrew Stanton, Denise Ream, John Lasseter Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround) Studio: Disney*Pixar DVD Release Date: November 10, 2009 Run Time: 96 minutes

Garmin n���vi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
$229.99
I really wanted to like this GPS unit, but it had several annoying flaws.

PROS:
- It was very accurate - we were in a very small town with several new streets and it gave us good directions - we didn't get any wrong directions and recognized every street. No complaints for accuracy and it did a great job of recalculating if you missed a turn or chose to go a different way.

CONS:
- There is no way to select your route - for example, driving up and down California you can choose between two major highways (I-5 or Hwy 99) - we had no choice of picking one. Maybe this is only available on more expensive GPS units? Once we got on our route, it would recalculate, but what if we didn't know how to get to that particular highway?? You can avoid ALL highways, but there was no way to avoid specific highways. You can also add VIA points, but that is a hassle and you'd have to look at a map to find cities along the route you want to take in order to add them and get the GPS to take you on that route. Isn't the purpose of a GPS to avoid maps altogether??
- There is no easy way to access points of interest - you have to select MENU, then WHERE TO, then POINTS OF INTEREST, then which type of interest, etc. If you are driving down the road (without a "copilot" to work your GPS) this is not practical! Also, to get back to your map, you have to hit BACK until you get out of that menu (several times!) Again, not practical when you are driving - there should be a one touch to get back to your original map/directions.
- There is a WHERE AM I feature (you just touch the traveling car) and it gives you your coordinates, nearest town and you can choose from HOSPITALS, POLICE STATIONS, and FUEL. Really? Who needs to get to the nearest police station? More practical would be nearest rest areas or restaurants.
- To find the nearest rest area you need to go through several touch menus. (It was MENU, WHERE TO, POINTS OF INTEREST, scroll down to the THIRD page to find AUTO SERVICES, scroll down a page to find REST AREA/TOURIST INFO - then it gave us several rest areas - some of which were on OTHER highways and some that we had already driven past - we had to select each one of them to see if it was even on the highway we were traveling on. NOT very practical to have to use nine touches to the screen to find a rest area???
- The touch screen was not very responsive - I had to use a pencil eraser to save my sanity. For example, when entering an address using the keyboard it would select a key 2 over from the one I actually pushed - lots of backspacing!! Also, dragging the map around to see ahead was painstaking.
- The zoom feature was weird (a "+" and a "-" to zoom in and out) and I never could get it to zoom the way I wanted it to.

All in all, an okay unit (esp. for the price) but it will be returned and I *hope* to find one that has the features I am looking for. We were impressed with it's accuracy and good directions but too many other annoyances for us to keep it. It is our first foray into GPS and we will keep looking!