Well, first of all I would like to say hey to everybody, it has been a long time since I have been active on these forums. Ok, there was a post a while back about this (http://www.hardwareforums.com/car-pc-13246/) and I thoguht I would give you an update. I did, in the end, decide to do this and I am done. These are the specs: 2000 Nissan Maxima GLE Via Epia MII-12000 Mainboard w/ embedded 1.2 GHz C3 Processor M2-ATX DC-DC PSU (This is a well known PSU in the car computing world) Ampie VoomPC case Western Digital Scorpio 40 GB 2.5" HDD 512MB PQI RAM 7" Touchscreen TFT Digimoto OBD-II Interface Airnet PCMCIA WiFi Card Microsoft GPS Locator (SirfStarIII) ione Wireless Keyboard w/ joystick mouse Generic DVD-ROM Drive ripped out of an old Sony Vaio (Soon to be changed) Syba USB external enclosure Scosche FM Modulator That is it, for the time being. The first upgrade will be a DVD burner, then a system to run the computer off AC power (I feel like an ass when I work on it with the engine running). My long term upgrade plan is to overhaul the stereo. Now to the instalation. Well, this is definitely not a project for somebody with a small amount of time. Between planning, installation, and troubleshooting this is probably a 100 hour project. This will vary from car to car but the majority of the actual installation time is spent runnin cables. I had to run a power cable from the battery, splice into a fuse tap I had for accessories, find numerous suitable grounding points, run audio cable (and keep it away from power cables), run VGA cable, run 3 USB cables, and a power cable from the external enclosure to the computer, all the while pulling out and replacing internal trim pieces, and removing and replacing the tire once. I also had to drill my dash to mount the LCD. The computer building and operating system installation and configuration was the easy part. Now comes the functionality of it all. The computer itself functions just as a computer should, it runs fine, plays music, connects to the internet (near a wireless AP), and plays CDs. The only issue with this part is DVD playback. It simply doesn't work. It will play for a few seconds/minutes and stops. The reviews on the enclosure were good so I think it might be the old-as-dirt DVD drive. The GPS works beautifully, and the OBD reader works fine, although there are some software issues. Other than that, it works like a charm. Here is the fun part, price. Now, While I don't know for sure what the grand total was (probably a bad sign), I think it was around $900. So that begs the question, "Was it worth it?" Well, to me, yes. I will say that you will definitely have to be a hardcore geek to enjoy this. You will have to enjoy wardriving, looking at sensor readings on your car, and want this integrated look. If you just want the functionality get the laptop with a port replicator. It might be more expensive but it will be easier to install and will be able to be used anywhere. So, there it is. If you are interested in doing something like this you need to go here ->Mp3Car.com. This is the best site in existence for Car PC information. There is a store, wiki, and forum. You can find anything you ever wanted to know about Car PCs, and probably stuff you didn't care about. Also, feel free to ask me.
Yea, sorry about that. I have the pictures and I tried to upload them last night but there were issues. I'll try again today.
