Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum, pretty obvious by my post count, but I wanted to see what the feedback is on the market for car computers. Is anyone interested in purchasing one, or getting one built for them? This isn't posted in the F/S forum since I don't have anything made now, plus this is my 3rd post (I think). I work in the IT field and love/enjoy building PCs. That being said, I'm no good at auto wiring. If anyone is interested in a PC that would fit in the trunk and have a 7" touchscreen (powered by USB only) that could either sit in the glovebox/center console or be mounted, please let me know, I'd love to build one for somebody. Feel free to ask any questions about parts/how it works, etc, I'm an open book! And if by chance I'm way out of line posting this, let me know as I'm a noob

 

What are the potential use for this computer? I really love to have a computer on board but can't think of a single way to use it safely while driving. I can bearly manage my smart phone.

 

While smart phones and definitely taken away a lot of need for in car computers, you can still use it for navigation if you want, your passenger could use it to look thinks up on the internet if you have a wireless modem. They could surf the web. If you have movies stored on the HD you could output them to a video monitor so your passengers can watch movies. Listen to MP3s. It can basically be an entire in car entertainment system for others in your car.

Anyway, I rather not complicate things too much and think using a Mac Mini, or a Netbook or something like that is just so much easier. You can take it with you when your out of the car too. My friend used to run his entire car A/V system from a iBook nearly 10 years ago.

 

All of the necessary hardware is available on the market to make a sick carputer. There's some decent software out for the interface too.

For the touch screen, most people opt for the 7" xenarc lcd. Possible accessories include USB versions of GPS antenna, sat radio, wi-fi, bluetooth, etc... I didn't install one in my car yet because I've been waiting for flash-based hard drives to finally approach consumer-friendly prices. I wouldn't put a spinning hard drive to work in a mobile environment though.

 

omg, you missed out on solid state drives on slickdealz... I looked at it but didn't buy one because I don't have a carpc.

 

Yeah the hardware exists to make a full fledged PC viable for auto applications. I envision a pc that auto syncs with your home pcs and pull all audio/video from those PCs. I do this between my laptop and desktop already. SSD would def be beneficial, but not necessary. A smaller single or 2 platter 2.5" laptop drive should be sufficient. But a SSD would be really nice. I've seen several 7" touchscreens that are USB powered so that wouldn't really be an issue. I actually just saw today a mini-itx board that works with the new "Core" series Intel processors. Video and CPU power on one chip would be fantastic. Once we sell my wifes car I think I'll put one together, but we just had our first baby so money's a lil short...

 

There was a guy in the sc430 section that was featured for his carputer install. He did a super clean install! Let me see if i can find it.

 

sounds nice someone try one

 

This was my setup from back in 2007

EDIT: These pix below are from 2007. The setup has been updated recently though. Newer computer, screen, running Windows7 instead of XP, and a few other things. Oh yeah, wirless 3G internet now also. Can go online anywhere on the go wherever I get a cell signal. The navigation on the carpc is cool and all, but I prefer using the Google Navigation on my Andriod phone since it came out around 6 months ago. It's much better because everything is updated live. In my opinion, it's much better than any other nav system out there. It syncs with google maps, goolgle streetview, live traffic, and pretty much everything is live. The main thing I use the CarPC now is just for showing off lol, and to run my music. Basically a fancy media player

 

I believe Clarion just came out with a deck with installed wifi... Not sure how extensive the software is, but it does exist

 

Everything you need to know is on mp3car.com