Thread: Carputer, easiest option?!

What about something like this:-

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Mini-ITX-mitx-...1%7C240%3A1318 ??

If I got something like that, what else would I need to make it work in the car, apart from the screen of course! What power adapter would I need?

Also, what other things would I need to make it feel like an OEM multi-media unit? I assume a front end of sorts, but hardware wise? Can I connect it to my phone, wireless internet, etc??

Thanks for any help, wanna get this out of the way asap!!!

LMAO! I could build one for less than a 10th of the price of that! Plus I don't want a double DIN unit, just a unit that can go in the boot with screen up front!

You never specified a price range. You just said you wanted an easy solution.

Your most likely not going to find a premade carpc solution with 3ghz processor and a couple gigs of ram. If you want to build a system like that and then get enough power to it to run it more power to you. But that kind of computer is just way over powered for carpc use. Unless you going to me doing 3d gaming and/or video editing in your car its not worth it. A lot of people run Little Valley boards that have 1.2ghz celerons in the them and 512-1gb of ram and those run every feature of a common car pc without a glitch and they consume very low amounts of power. But thats not a prebuilt system.

Either you have to stick with a lower powered computer and choose from the prebuilt systems in the mp3car store, or you going to have to build one piece by piece and just for fair warning (and anyone on here ill tell you the same) you will spend a lot more money that you originally planned.

I agree you never said anything about cost or budget...

Have you looked at ALL your options?

Aftermarket (ie: Alpine, Pioneer, JVC) cover 90% of the uses of typical Car PC installations on this board. What a CarPc gives you is more codec options, being able to stream video (via Orb, Hava, Slingbox), HDTV, etc, etc.

I recently found some OEM style solutions as well - www.flyaudio.net

There more options out there and priced competitive with CarPC's

Some of the pre-made HU's like the Infill have issues too compared to home-built systems as well and cost is higher than home-built or aftermarket. More products, more competition will bring the price down.

If your anal about sound quality that will increase the cost quite a bit, you never specified that either.

I say shop the Aftermarket Media Players/Navigation units first, then compare its features with what's readily available from OEM, OEM Style suppliers and Car PC's.

Car PC might not be your best option...