Fiberoptic

A blast of e-mail was sent out on Monday to all the car computer and telematics stores around the globe by some former employees of the now defunct Infill and Maxan. (we were open cced). Apparently they have formed a new company called HTS. The e-mail states they are accepting advanced orders on their FunDi G7. There are lots of concerns, but maybe it is just because they are still in stealth mode.

•As of Monday 3/23/2009 their domain carpcmall.com points to a parked website.
•Their PDF looks like CAD rendered image
•“Accepting advanced orders” Hmm. Have we heard that before in the car PC world?

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Nukeb32dc2

I have to agree with you, PDF looks rendered. '

"Accepting advance orders" baa ha ha, this DOES sound familiar. At least the delivery date is not even speculated.

"Touch panel = Glass to film." ehhh, resistive?


Pricepoint, sunlight readability and front end are the most important factors and no attempt was made to identify any of these component attributes. Fail!

I have to agree with BugByte- the car PC is dead. It will never completely vanish with car/computer enthiusiasts like us around but I do not think a company will ever be able to market an expensive product like this that can be stolen from a car in minutes.

Lsatly, If putting a computer in my car was as easy as installing a stereo, I dont think I would have done it some 5 years ago. The potential customers of this product want the advantages of a carputer without the hassel of complex install. My feeling is that people that do not want to be bothered with install can probably get around fine with a GPS unit and a stereo.

Thoughts?

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2k1Toaster

I dont want to say that it is scam, as they have obviously put out a product before, so the capability is there. But it seems very very very advanced ordering. I wouldnt be surprised if the timeline is in years, and they are looking for more of a R&D investment at this point.

I dont think the CarPC is dead or will die. I think it will however move to linux or WinCE shells masking the fact that it is afull computer. It is just as cheap to put an x86 processor in a design rather than an ARM, which to me is the definition of a CarPC (x86 ot x64 in a car). And these will all be hacked soon after debut, to run custom code on the standardized processor.

Either way, I would say interesting but too early for Infil, and I think that is why they havent really gone public. I think they lost their spot to the Guru, and reliability wise after the T3 and G4 I think many will be hesitant to buy this over a Guru or whatever else pops up. I think RoadRunner is working on a hardware solution as well if I remember correctly.

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