Geek My Ride

**Sir Lancerlot** · 06-15-2005, 08:51 AM

Hey. I was out at Barnes and Nobles the other day and came across a book called *Geek My Ride*. It looked like a great read. Has anyone in here picked it up yet? I was thinking of buying it. Just looking around the net to see if I can find it cheaper. It's pretty much a big instructional book for building carputers. Lots of pics and step by step instructions.

**Heckle0** · 06-15-2005, 08:54 AM

Don't get it.
Most of the things in there can be found on the forums. Actually. We you should just print out the forums and that would be better.

**deetap** · 06-15-2005, 08:56 AM

U mean this one: Car PC Hacks ?

If not there are two books on geeking the ride

**Vchat20** · 06-15-2005, 09:06 AM

iirc, some sections in it were written by well known members here including the site owner. id say pick it up.

**evandude** · 06-15-2005, 09:11 AM

if he's talking about the same one I am, then no, it's a different book, and it's literally titled "geek my ride"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

vchat, i'm pretty sure the one that people on here contributed to was the one deetap posted.

"geek my ride" is a crappy book. As stated by heckle0, theres nothing in there you can't find on the forums. everything is dumbed down so much, it's like he wrote it for someone with no electronics, computer, or fabrication skills whatsoever to put a computer in their car... it's just stupid. There isn't much actual useful info. AND, he is extremely repetitive. I counted at LEAST three times in the book where he put the EXACT SAME instructions for how to configure your computer to hibernate... like he didn't have enough material to fill the book without copying the same stuff multiple times. and most of the actual content, where he's actually putting stuff in his car, is pretty useless because it's specific to HIS car and you'd have to do many things differently in any other car. (how to hot glue an RCA coupler into your center console... how to put a touchscreen on your dash by gluing the desktop stand to the top of the dash... etc)

in other words, it's little more than an extended work log of his own install (which isn't even a very impressive install) with a bunch of extra "filler" of extremely dumbed-down explanations of what everything does.

**Sir Lancerlot** · 06-15-2005, 09:28 AM

Evandude:
I haven't read into the book much yet. I was looking to see if anyone had it before I thought about spending $30 on it. Glad you put a review of it on here before I though of buying it. If its dumbed down, thats not neccesarily a bad thing. Not everyone in here are that technical. I have no understanding about some of the things people talk about on here, so maybe a dumbed down book is good for some people. as for repetativness (sp), that would be a negative in deciding to purchase.

Any more reviews?

**tj!2k4** · 06-15-2005, 09:37 AM

yes, there are at least two books.. of the two that I know of, one is called "Geek My Ride", and the other is an O'Reilly book called "Car PC Hacks". The latter of which has contributions from Forum members, as I recall it.