Hallelujah! I couldn't agree with you more. I recently rented a Ford Edge with the new touchscreen. Although the car itself was very well built and nicely designed, the touchscreen ruined it. There are almost no useable tactile buttons for basic things. You have to drill down deep in menus to simply adjust the temperature. Typical scenario I encountered: The kids in the back wanted more volume; Typically on a well designed car stereo you can reach over with your right hand, without taking your eyes off the road, and tweak the 'fade' knob by feel alone. Here, my wife and I had to exit out of the climate screen, drill down in a fidgety menu (which annoyingly beeps every touch) to find the fade function (e.g. "honey, go back, then back again... no you went too far, go back into Entertainment, then find Settings, hit enter..."). On top of that, the fade function is designed as a "fancy" graphical birds eye view of the car interior, and is implemented in such a way that you have to incrementally press a tiny plus button.. +,+,+,+,+,+,+ like 50 times to fade to the rear, and do the same dangerous eyes-completely-off-the-road song-and-dance if you want to fade to front. I can't believe such a ridiculous system was actually OK'd by Ford engineers. Like I said, the car itself was mechanically really well built, but the touchscreen UI completely ruined it and I wouldn't buy one for this reason alone. It's disappointing that these "high-tech looking" touchscreens actually appear to sell more cars and completely trump security and real thoughtful design.

I'm a big fan of HD. I don't see the difference between 720p and 1080p on most tv sizes (50" and under). I do have a HD-DVD player (I'm a sucker, and paid $99 with 7 movies.) I must admit that once you start watching certain types of movies with breathtaking cinematography, you don't want to downgrade to DVD resolution. Another thing is, most people are novices and can't tell the difference between quality levels, until they become aware. This applies to everything, computers, audio, video, cars, and the list goes on. Once people become used to something, that's when they realize they want the better product. For example, give someone in Africa who's never experienced better technology a Mac 512k, a 12" crt tv with a VCR, and a K-car, and they'll be on cloud nine. Give the same to an american, and they'd probably laugh in your face. ;)