Registration

Forum search is used to locate information on the forums themselves. The Search function in the navigation bar across the top also gives you quick access to search the forums. There is an option to search thread titles or posts, as well as the mp3Car.com Wiki. Below those options, you can opt to use Google to search these forums.

This search service is provided as a means for another search method. Due to the nature of the built in vBulletin search, sometimes it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. Also, due to the shear size of these forums, using multiple search engines can yield the results you are looking for. Feel free to use them all.

Google (and other WWW search engines) yield lots of information about topics that are not covered on the forums. Many times they can yield more information than is available on the forums alone.

Searching for information is helpful because much of the information that members (particularly new members) seek is already present on the forums, either in the FAQ sections, the Wiki, or in forum posts. It is recommended that members seeking specific information search the forums before posting a question. Most of the time, the answers can be found without having to create a new thread or post. This helps future new members by not creating lots of threads about the same topic, making information easier for members to locate.

To ensure that you get a speedy and helpful answer please try to make your questions clear and concise. Using proper punctuation and spacing will also increase responses. Also make sure to post in the appropriate sub-forum. If you are new, the Newbie section might be the best place to post to start. For more information on How to Ask Questions go HERE.

mp3Car strongly suggests that members choose their user name carefully. Should a member seek to change their name for some reason, they may do so. There is a $10.00 fee for members with less than 200 posts. For members outside of the US and Canada, payment must be made via PayPal for the change. Once the name is changed the member will also have FKA (former user name) placed in their signature.

For members with more than 200 posts, please email your old and new user name along with your email address attached to your membership to the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page. To pay to change your user name, please go to this link on the mp3Car store and follow the instructions to place your order.

Active mp3Car community members who represent a company on the Forums, deserve to be recognized for the contributions they make to the forums and be able to provide valuable information on products to forum members. Company Member Benefits page.

The following guidelines must be followed completely, otherwise you may loose the ability in the future to represent your company on the mp3Car forums.

1. Please do not place the company’s web address in either your signature, as a hyperlink, or in a post. This is considered advertising and will be subject to penalty. If the mp3Car Store sells your products however, you may note this in your signature and have a hyperlink to the product(s) on the mp3Car Store.

2. If you have a reasonable cause for placing a link to your company, first ask for approval from mp3Car. Certain companies have been given permission to place a link to their company website, based on their contributions to the community.

3. Please do not use multiple user names for one individual at a company nor use one username for multiple people. This is an online community of people, should you choose to take part on behalf of a company, please do so as a person that is a member of this community.

4. Please be respectful on the forums; should a disagreement arise with another member that may be a competitor, or you find another member is purposely flaming your company, report the post and the moderators will take action, if any is needed.

5. Approved Commercial sellers may post a link, but they must do the following if they are linking to their product/store:
A. Provide their primary link
B. Provide a link to the manufacturer.
C. Provide a link to the mp3car store. (Mp3car Sponsors this forum, you can also buy this product on their store here *link*)

If mp3car does not stock the product, there must be a link to the manufacturers page.

Example: FYI There is a new cable that Mitch released for the HD tuners. It is now USB so you dont have to deal with any USB to RS232 adapters. You can find the cable on my store here*link*, the manufacturer's site is here*link*, you can also buy this product here*link*
from mp3car who sponsors this forum.

mp3Car reserves the right to change these guidelines or make exceptions at any time.

Private messages, or PMs, are, as the name implies, private communications between two forum members, similar to email. PMs are excellent for negotiating classified transactions or asking questions that, for whatever reason, you don't want visible to all forum members

Forum moderators cannot read your PMs.

Personal information such as addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and such should be kept off the forums. This is for members' protection and privacy. While the general forum membership would likely not use any such information maliciously, anyone with Internet access could easily read the content of these forums, take the information and do who-knows-what with it.

The mp3Car.com staff is not responsible for anything resulting from the information you post on the forums and will remove information upon request.

This hobby grows because members help other members. Please respect the new members, even when questions are obvious. Not everyone knows the things you do.

Also, remember that not everyone that offers assistance knows what they are doing, so it is possible to receive incorrect information. Again, the mp3Car.com staff is not responsible for anything that happens as a result of acting on information you receive on these forums.

Please use your better judgment when following information on these forums. If in doubt, please do not hesitate to ask for confirmation. Chances are, other members will be happy to provide it or to question the advice offered. After all, two heads are usually better than one.

In order to keep spam to a minimum on the forums, the first few posts of new members are approved by a moderator. Until the post is approved, it will remain in place, but will not be visible.

The FAQ Emporium is a collection of informational write-ups that have been compiled by members over the years. This is not a forum to post questions, so please don't. It is recommended that you search in this forum for answers before starting a new thread.

The purpose of the Classifieds is for mp3Car Forum Members to buy, sell and trade and potentially give away mobile computing related products. This area is not intended to be used as a primary means of income for any one individual. The use of the Classifieds section is free to all mp3Car Forum Members with a significant (not disclosed publicly) number of posts. For those mp3Car Forum Members without a significant number of posts, they will be unable to post in the classified section. This limitation has been set, to better protect mp3Car Forum members from being scammed. mp3Car expects that Members with a significant number of posts will be less likely attempt to scam other members of the mp3Car Community.

If you are a company seeking to sell products in the classified section, which do not conflict with the mp3Car Store’s product selection, please contact mp3Car by using the Contact Us tab at the bottom of the page. We are fairly open-minded, so if you have a deal that you would like to pass on to the Forum Members, we will be happy to approve it. The fee for a commercial post is $25 per post, for a duration of one month. Failure to contact the mp3Car Store or pay for a commercial post, if you are a company selling a product, are both cause for being banned from the forums.

For mp3Car Forum Members considering a purchase in the Classifieds section, please use your best judgment. mp3Car cannot prevent scam artists from registering on these forums and selling goods, however we expect that the minimum post requirement will decrease the number of scams. The format for the Classifieds area has also been chosen to help cut down on the number of scammers and to help provide the users with a method to rate each other on the quality of their transactions.

Scamming an mp3Car Forum Member is cause for being banned. Should any mp3Car Forum Member have any problems with a seller in the Classifieds section, please let us know by using the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page.

You can set up an ad in the following formats: For Sale, For Trade, Auction. We have even set-up a free parts section for those products that you would like to give away in good nature to help out other members of this community.

This is where you can brag on your completed vehicle computer installation. Are they ever really completed?

Please do not post your work logs in this forum. A separate sub-forum exists for this purpose.

Start your own work log and use it as a journal for the progress of your project(s). Pics are always welcome. The more the merrier!

When you complete your project, it can easily be moved to Show Off Your Project, just use the icon to report your post to the administrators and moderators. One of us will see it and we will gladly move your completed project thread to the 'Show off your project' forum.

The focus of these forums is vehicle computing. The Car Audio forum is for issues relating to that, specifically. There are many members who are very knowledgeable about car audio that are very helpful. They are more than happy to provide assistance in just about any area of the field, just keep in mind that this is not the place to come to ask generalized car audio questions as they don't relate to CarPCs.

If your question(s) is/are about car audio only, you are more likely to get a timely response on a car audio-specific forum. Here is a list of sites. As stated in that post, it's not that you won't find an answer here, it's that you're much more likely to get a timely response in a car audio dedicated forum.

This is where you can post anything that's generally non-computer related. The rules still apply, and are enforced.

There is a sub-forum called Deep Off-Topic (D.O.T.). That forum is pretty much a no-holes barred forum. The only rule that applies in D.O.T. is no pornography. A password is required to gain access to Deep Off-Topic.

This is for suggestions for the moderation/administration team in order to make the forums a better place for the community. Please keep in mind that all suggestions are read and are given consideration.

If your suggestion is not implemented, please do not take it personally. The administrators of this forum have to balance upgrade paths, maintenance times, and general hazards when applying modifications to these forums. Because of this, modifications have to be taken into great consideration.

As a registered member of these forums you have access to our image hosting feature. We feel that we have been very generous with the amount of space allotted for uploading your pictures, so host away! All that we ask is that you keep it clean and only use this service for pictures that are intended for use on this forum.

This helps make things a bit easier when trouble shooting others issues or having them help you. This also means that you can save the space in your signature for other important things that you may want to make note of. No need to clutter it up with your system specs.

This feature was implemented as a way to help you see who else is around you in your neck of the woods.

This feature was implemented as a way to help users host various files. This way, you no longer have to deal with a host going down and finding dead links in threads. If files are uploaded here, they will be here as long as the mp3Car.com forums are here.

Flaming is considered the angry or abusive behavior toward another forum member. This takes the form of calling another member insulting or offensive names, but can also take the form of other insults or derogatory statements, including derogatory statements about race, religion, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics.

If a moderator feels that a members behavior is a detriment to these forums, they reserve the right to act accordingly. These forums exist as a community of hobbyists helping hobbyists, but also as a resource for other individuals to gain information about how to implement CarPCs in their business model.

Forum members may not use these forums to accuse companies and individuals of wrong doing. This includes, but is not limited to, intellectual property rights infringement and theft. All issues must be taken up directly and in private with the company or individual. While mp3Car does not condone or support breeches of the above, we cannot allow any such comments made in the mp3Car forums. This behavior is cause for infraction and potential banning.
However, if you know of any such breeches that may relate to any product we stock please contact us privately.

As mp3car.com is a commercial enterprise, advertising and commercial practices are allowed only with the approval of the mp3Car.com forum administrators. If you would like to request permission to advertise on these forums, please use the Contact Us tab at the bottom of the page. Links to other sites that sell comparable products to the mp3Car.com store are acceptable to point out product specs or comparison pricing as an aid to other members. Acting as an agent for another website which sells similar products and advertising the website or products on the forums is not permitted.

Spam is defined as unwanted, unsolicited commercial emails. While great lengths have been taken by the administration to prevent spam from appearing on the forums, it still happens. Members can help deal with spam by reporting the spam post. This will alert administrators & moderators so that they can take action.

Acts committed on the mp3car.com forums that are found to be harassing other members to invoke a reaction, achieve monetary gain or simply annoy members will not be tolerated. This includes belittling, berating, or general harsh comments towards other members.

mp3car.com will not tolerate any use of the forums to facilitate any illegal activities. Links to websites that share illegal software, music, movies, or other data are not permitted. Links to private FTP sites with illegal content are also not permitted. Discussions on how to circumvent software registration & activation, workarounds for software copy-protection, hardware hacks to bypass safety features and other discussions of obviously illegal activity will not be permitted.

Reporting a post through the use of the icon alerts the moderators and administration that there is a post that has a problem. It should be used to report spam, flaming, illegal activities, scammers using the Classified forum to find victims, and other violations of the mp3car.com forums Terms Of Service.

As a service to the members of this forum, user galleries have been implemented. To learn more about these galleries, please visit this thread. If you have any issues, please report them in the Suggestions/Comments forum.

Pornography and other adult-oriented material (including hate speech, violent behavior and other questionable material) are not permitted. Comments directed towards other members are also not tolerated. There is no warning for this offense. Please use your best judgement in this regard as there are no re-dos here.

Group buys are not permitted on the mp3Car.com forums. If there is a product that you feel other users would benefit from, please feel free to contact one of the administrators. We are always looking for new and exciting products to bring to our community.

Users are not permitted to use mp3Car.com's forums to direct community members to external sites or publications for the purposes of personal gain. Examples include, but are not limited to, sites which compensate the user with free gifts such as iPods in exchange for bringing users to that site; sites that pay users for click-throughs, etc. These types of activities are considered spam and will be dealt with as such.

Because the forms that these schemes present themselves in are constantly changing, moderator judgment will decide whether they qualify as a violation of the terms of service. When in doubt, PM an admin or moderator before posting.

Any behavior that is deemed as disruptive to the forums, to the developers of front-ends or other software, or to the store it's self will be dealt with at the moderators or administrator discretion.

Examples of this include, but are not limited to, providing hacked copies of software, discussions about how to hack the software, links to unreleased versions of the software, discussions and comments that have no value to the advancement of the software or hardware, general product bashing, etc.

In short, if you're about to post something just to get under the skin of a fellow forum member, moderator, or administrator, don't. Your actions will be dealt with at the discretion of the member, moderator, or administrator. Other members of the forum may report such activity without fear of repercussion.

If you receive a warning, it is just that, a warning. The points system does not apply. If you are on the receiving end of a warning, perhaps you should take a step back and consider your actions.

If you receive an infraction, it is most likely due to the fact that a moderator or an administrator views your actions as breaking the rules of this forum. Members may also report posts to administrators and moderators to help police the forums when they feel that another member is out of line. This is a community that thrives on being helpful and willing. If you receive an infraction, please take a moment to consider your actions and ask yourself if they are contributing to the overall purpose of these forums.

If you feel that you have received an infraction for no reason, or a reason that you feel is invalid. Please feel free to voice your concerns in the appropriate area, the Suggestions/Comments forum. Please understand that your concerns will not be unheard. This forum exists because of the users, and we must all remember this.

Infractions are all assigned a point value, and will all last for 30 days. The infractions and their point values are as follows:

If you receive infractions worth 10 points, you are automatically banned for 3 days. If you receive infractions worth 25 points, you are automatically permanently banned from these forums.

This procedure is in place to help keep the forums a fair and just place.