Thread: Complete Indash CarPC's being shown at CES

here is the manufacture link:
http://azentek.com/webpages/atlas.html

Scott....
You're aware he put the mfr link in his post?

It's stuff like this that is going to take the vehicle PC from a hobby to mainstream use...
Keep your eyes on the road and don't surf for pr0n!

Originally Posted by spoonraker

It's almost sad to see that. Sure it's awesome, looks like a nice unit, but that means that now anybody with some money can just go and buy a complete carpc and drop it in their dash... Where's the fun in that? Our hobby could become something you see all the time now, rich people with absolutely no understanding of how it works will be driving around showing their crap off.

I imagine it will be just like cars now, customization is where it will be at.

I keep thinking that when CarPC's become mainstream, there is going to be some evil virus that will overtake any route on your GPS and drive you to their store and not let you go! It drives there, parks, and immobilizes the engine until a bag with their RFID tag enters the car signalling you bought something, and then you are free to leave!

But seriously though, I have mixed feelings over this. On the one side it will be like spoonraker said, and everybody and their grandma will have a PC in their car making it less of a "wow" factor. The positive though is we might actually start seeing some good things such as vista native GPS programs that look like garmin's units and a bigger developement into hybrid hard drives or cheap mega flash drives with 100Gb and excess space for cheap. Once things go mainstream prices drop.

Although I am guessing that this CarPC will have a hardware implementation of DRM protection no video while moving, and maybe even shutoff the internet while moving so updated traffic reports and streaming media would be impossible. And I guess that is where the nerdy underground CarPC group comes in!

I'm not worried. I rather geek it up and built it myself at a fraction of the cost. The more mainstream it becomes the more hardware we have availabe to play with.

this product is being made by a company who's sole purpose is vehicle customization. I dont forsee heavy DRM features. Video lock when in motion possible, but that will more than likely be software hacked.

remember it's running vista. Meaning we'll have alot of control over what we can do to update/change the os. Hell we probably would be able to install another os.

Pioneer also has a in car pc but its only for the japanese market right now, pretty much an update to the Z1/Raku Navi, doesnt run windows.

Originally Posted by durwood

I'm not worried. I rather geek it up and built it myself at a fraction of the cost. The more mainstream it becomes the more hardware we have availabe to play with.

fraction of the cost is debatable.

$700 for the Alpine 701 + controller just to get really good sound from your CarPC to amp
$700 Avg just for the actual carPC(including sound/optical/junk)
$300 For the Screen
$200 for Power/shutdown/startup
$100 for Cables/wire
$80 For GPS
$15 for Bluetooth

Then theres the cost of software(if you pay for it), Looking at what? 120 for windows XP, $100 for Iguidance?

Yeah you can reduce costs all around. But as stated elsewhere, take whatever you thought it was going to cost, and double that.

i personally would look forward to having more computers in cars...making it mainstreem, i know it would take away from what we do...but i would like it. imo