I would put the TomTom in that same bucket as OEM. It's dedicated hardware. What features does it have? Does it stick to the basics? Caller ID, Make call, received call, call log, etc and not try to do more like phone book sync, signal strength etc? They are obviously trying to get as many systems connected via a basic BT profile as possible. The problem with many BT dongles is that they don't support HSP. If they don't support that, I'm not even sure how they get it to work. There are some dongles that do great with HSP but most people don't have those and expect everything to work with a cheapo $10 Newegg BT dongle. It just doesn't cut it. That's just the BT side of things. What about a good headset or Mic?

Yup, I'm a little bitter - that's true.

The price of GPS units has fallen dramatically in the last couple of years. Sure, a GPS might lack a few features that a Car PC would give you - but while the features you get from a GPS have been increasing (and the price decreasing), CarPC's have been stagnant (I could even say that since Streetdeck has backtracked on all of their "promised" features, they've actually been going backwards, and prices more or less staying the same). Sure, if GPS units aren't "good enough" for you right now, just wait a couple of years (they are constantly adding features and coming out with new models), and you can bet they'll get a lot better. Or you could wait a few years for streetdeck or CF or whatever to release things like Bluetooth phone support - but you probably shouldn't hold your breath.

If you already have a CarPC installed and running, it might be hard to justify reinstalling the stock stereo and getting a GPS... On the other hand, if you haven't bought anything yet, I can't see why in the world anybody would spend (easily) $1200+ vs. around $200.00 for a complete turnkey and no hassle system.

I'm just glad I was able to sell off most of my car PC and recoup a good part of the money I wasted on it. Honestly though, I think if someone like Garmin or TomTom comes up with an in-dash mount unit that replaces the car stereo, (either using an embedded linux or MoblePC interface), it's going to be really hard to justify the money and futz factor that a CarPC represents.

I can see both sides of the fence, but don't understand why drop the whole CarPC simply because o fthe navigation or bluetooth.

I personally don't even use if for that, I run a garmin when needed but have the carpc for entertainment purposes.

My justification was spend $1500 on a decent 6.5" TV headunit where you still have many limitations such as
1. CD collections
2. DVD collections
3. Converting everything to your ipod (music or video)

or spend $1500 on a CarPC with a 7" touchscreen (click and drag all music and video )

Life is so much easier with updating the carpc library from the home computer.

Now

Of course everything that SD does and that CF does, RR does. You can make any of them look and act like any of the others. Want SD to look like RR, ok. Want RR to look like CF, ok. All possible. The only difference is audio player support which CF/RR win because they dont use WMP.

And for on topic.... can CF or RR track planes?

StreetDeck Rocks!