actually, it's 259...from MSDN: "The text of the ListViewItem should not exceed 259 characters or unexpected behavior could occur."
I would say that trying to display that many characters in a ListView would make the ListView not the best choice of control.
Microsoft suggests that if you want to show the text for a selected item, then add a textbox to the form and when the user selects a new listviewitem, populate the textbox with the text of the column that exceeds 259 characters. Or, you can use a tooltip...that's a pretty simple solution.
Or use a custom listview that someone else has created such as:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/list/aa_listview.asp[
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