Car PC

[f1anatic]

Nobody in their right mind would choose CF over RR at a cost (mine was 125, no navi engine) if RR does what they want. Unfortunately for me it did not. I tried, there was much tweaking and I could not get it "right". So that is why I chose CF. If RR works for you, more power to you and you just saved yourself a shitload of money. I couldn't.

 

Too many - get your winamp install right to play music issues, many unaligned skins and buttons. The thing with RR, for me, was the suite of separate programs needed to have working and talking together and make it as a package - with RR as a glorified command center. And no, I am no computer illiterate either.

[nemo]

^ That's how I feel f1, too. The one benefit to RR, though, is the community. There's lots of plug ins and skins. I'm just hoping CF will start to get a bigger community.

[Jerboa113]

+1. RR had a huge community of people making new programs plugins and custom code to suit their own needs, and if it was popular it became part of the official release.

 

I even made skins for it, although they were boring by comparison to most.. they suited my needs and I hope others needs as well.

[Backlash]

^^ exactly why i started down that road.

Like i said i looked at linux, first really, but the community is not as big. and there were things that the linux builds just couldn't do yet.

 

I found that with RR, they say the old version of winamp works best. found that link and downloaded it already. skins, found a few i like. edited one to be pretty much how i want it already. so many guides and help out there for it. figured out how to stop the damn spinning logo that some have, neat at first but gets SO annoying...

 

nutshell, RR does what i want it to do. and i don't mind learning a new piece of software and adapt to or work around it's "features".

[aigochamaloh]

Got my Carnetix CNX-P1900 today. God damn, that thing is small. I always thought it would be huge, and I'd have trouble fitting it. I am certain I'll have NO problem putting it in behind the dash.

 

That said, I'll create my own thread for my CarPC install.

[f1anatic]

Got my Carnetix CNX-P1900 today. God damn, that thing is small. I always thought it would be huge, and I'd have trouble fitting it. I am certain I'll have NO problem putting it in behind the dash.

 

That said, I'll create my own thread for my CarPC install.

 

Why a separate thread ?

I centralized ALL the info in one thread so people (noobs) do not have to claim they could not find the info. For the past 2 years this has been the thread where all the info and discussions took place. Decentralizing the info is not productive. Create your own install posts within this thread, I will link it up in the first post.

[aigochamaloh]

Why a separate thread ?

I centralized ALL the info in one thread so people (noobs) do not have to claim they could not find the info. For the past 2 years this has been the thread where all the info and discussions took place. Decentralizing the info is not productive. Create your own install posts within this thread, I will link it up in the first post.

 

I only did it because everyone else seemed to have their own with organized pictures and etc. I thought it wouldn't be too much trouble to put a link to my thread in the first post of yours. My bad?

[salvi]

For a simple install, RR is fine, but once you start tweaking and adding other stuff, it becomes a pain in the ass to work with. You have to get all the different programs working together and in the end I just quit using it.

 

With CF, double click and install, select what you want/dont' want and call it a day. CF has a good community with its own forum as well.

[Backlash]

yeah but not worth $250

like i said, i had almost everything up on the old laptop in 20-30 minutes... it's simple when the community already has done the lion's share of the work. just download, and go.

 

anyway, got the Eee PC today. nightmare getting windows XP to install correctly.

by the 2nd-3rd time i ran Nlite, i figured out i screwed that up...

Had XP up and running, everything looked good, and the Wireless just would not work... after an hour of messing with the drivers and everything i can think of, some of the stupid networking components were not installed...

back to nlite.

This time i think i got everything running right.

[Jerboa113]

whats your bootup time?

 

The fastest I was able to get my carputer booted w/o using anything like nlite was 1 minute from power on to playing music in roadrunner. It had winxp sp2 prof. and I had just disabled services but they were still present.

 

the boot device was a 2.5" HDD.. if I had to do it again I'd try to get SSDD.

[f1anatic]

Mine is 37 seconds but went up 10 after I installed the Treehugger thing (to read up engine data). But from hibernation i do 15 seconds.

[Backlash]

after a long nightmare... it's running fine and no more little quirks popping up.

 

Word of advice for those thinking of playing with NLite. It's a great tool, but just know that the first 2-3 times you use it... odds are you will make mistakes that will drive you nuts and make you start over again.

 

I'd say from power off to desktop, 20-30 seconds maybe... haven't timed it.

loading windows is slower than the Linux that was on it. that was like maybe 10 seconds... WinXP Pro SP3 btw.

Also put AVG free AV on it for the time being, just while it is able to get online. once in the car... i'll really have no need for AV anymore. So the AV may be slowing the boot time a little also.

 

Roadrunner is installed, but i havn't even begun messing with it after last night... get up this morning and the screen resolution kept reverting back to 1024x768.. screen is only 1024x600. two drivers from Asus were conflicting. was a known issue i guess. after i get Roadrunner how i want it, i'll start working on performance.

 

just finished installing all the drivers, wireless works fine now. although i notice the range is not nearly as good or strong as my other laptop. but i don't care, once installed in my car wireless will be turned off and probably never get on the net again. just bring any software/updates over via USB stick.

 

have to say, the netbooks... are quite nice. Screen is sharp, speed is pretty good. (for $200 i'm impressed with the speed. 2gb ram would be nice though) Keyboard is small for my tastes, but again once installed in car it won't hardly ever be used.

 

Question, anyone know of a link or a list of exactly which Services NEED to run on a CarPC? which ones we can turn off?

I know of quite a few to turn off, but i wonder if the CarPC since it's only running certain things, if there are more we can turn off safely.

[f1anatic]

i know i wrote down but i cannot find it now but i can certainly tell you what i have going on when i turn it on the next time i am in the car.

 

Just so you know, I never found minlogon to do such an outstanding speed-up job as people have claimed. But it reduces some functionality and it is kind of hard to get back into windows desktop and such.

 

AVG AV will certainly slow it down but do you know what actually slows down the boot time ? W I R E L E S S - especially if you set it up to automatically connect to your network and/or detect networks. If you have an external wireless adapter, do an experiment. It will be 15 seconds difference at least.

 

Also do not forget to turn off in device manager the ports that you do not need/use such as firewire; serial ports etc.

[Backlash]

Yeah i'll pretty much disable as much as i can once i put it in the car.

 

just a little update on the CarPC.

Storage. I knew i needed quite a bit more storage... so i saw the deal of the day in general chat.

2 of these will be my storage space. along with a 16gb SD card i picked up cheap last week.

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/625/210562625.jpg

I thought i would have to buy a few USB sticks and have to remove all the plastic crap surrounding them. Looks like Kingston already had that in mind

so a total of 48GB of storage to complement the weak 4GB onboard.

 

i also found i can buy a 64 gb SSD for $179.00 heh. drops right in the EeePC. I figure if i can find a trashed EeePC with a 8GB SSD in it... i may grab it if it's cheap someday. but the 4GB for windows/frontend crap is fine.

 

Money sink... err CarPC total thus far:

Netbook $200

Storage $80.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Backlash

[Jerboa113]

what interface do the new SSDs use? I have come into posession of some laptops.. one may be a suitable donor for a ramen noodle style carputer lol.

[nemo]

^ Some use IDE, some use SATA.

[NSFW]

Yep, you can get them in both flavors.

[f1anatic]

WHy you need 48 Gb storage is beyond me.

Money sink... err CarPC total thus far:

Netbook $200

Storage $80.

 

Quit complaining. After 1000 dollars you are entitled. Before that...nope.

[aigochamaloh]

WHy you need 48 Gb storage is beyond me.

Money sink... err CarPC total thus far:

Netbook $200

Storage $80.

 

Quit complaining. After 1000 dollars you are entitled. Before that...nope.

 

Music and movies can fill up 48GB mighty quickly. I think my music alone is at 80 GB or so. FLAC takes a lot of room!

[Jerboa113]

yea.. the way I see it tho flac isn't worth it when 320 mp3s sound almost as good and take up way less space.

 

I would say keep your flac on the in housecomputer and convert them to 320s for the car.

 

your stock lgt stereo isnt that good anyway.

[f1anatic]

Movies in the car FTML !

[Jerboa113]

yea that too.. how much driving and watching are you doing? Maybe you sit in your car waitin gon something.. for that..I recommend DVDs.

[Backlash]

Personally I think ANY device playing a movie/video while car is in motion that the DRIVER can see.... ticket.

they want to say driving while holding a Cell phone is dangerous?... Let me think, purposely take eyes off road to watch a video/movie... yeah, worse.

Back seat for kids, fine. While parked, fine. while driving... nothing that can be viewed by the driver.

We have enough inattentive drivers on the road as it is... lets add video for them as well.

 

the CarPC, will only have mp3's and the related CarPC files/apps on it. the Video option is already removed from roadrunner

 

you think 48GB is not enough?

let me explain to you about me and music.... I have a single sided Data DVD with everyone of my mp3's on it, except a few random ones i found online, every song in my library is on my 16gb ipod touch right now. total size used.... just over 4.5gb.

my 30gb ipod i sold, had 10gb used. i used it for file storage also.

 

with the exception of Metallica and AC/DC CD's, along with a Van Halen greatest hits, i have not purchased a CD/download of music since i'd say 1999ish... I don't listen to music much anymore.

 

48GB of storage.... will be forever before i use that up.

[NSFW]

I feel the same way. It boggles my mind that virtually every skin on mp3car.com has Video and DVD buttons on it. And that's not even counting the fact that the V in DVD stands for video... why two buttons anyway?

 

My music at home is all lossless, but for my car I am not that picky. Between the wind noise, road noise, and exhaust noise, I'm not going to hear the difference between lossless and high-bit-rate compression.

[aigochamaloh]

It doesn't matter, if I have the space, I'm going to fill it with FLAC. My CarPC is only going to be for navigation and music only. Maybe wireless internet capabilities as well.