I went to the book store and they knew nothing about the Controls lab manual, so I emailed the professor and he directed me to another professor's webpage where the manual was posted. So I downloaded a pdf and did not have to buy it from the book store. Cool!
Now I have to decide whether I want to buy the $190 textbook for the lecture section. I think I could get by without it. It would be a pain to have to go to the library all the time if she starts assigning homework from the book and not just made-up problems. The vibes book was one that she did not think was very good on most counts and we never followed the book in lecture but we did have homework problems from it. I have it still. It is a good reference I suppose. They derived their equations of motion with energy methods rather than Newton's Laws, so I can see an alternative method to get the equations.
The Controls stuff seems pretty straightforward and I think the lecture material will be sufficient for me.
I can always buy it and take the depreciation hit but recoup some cost by selling it back to the boockstore next year.
The lab manuals are usually cheap like $20 but not re-salable to the bookstore.