You have heat issues with carputers because your running them in an enclosed space with temperatures easily running well above 100 degrees and a lot of laptops are designed around the idea that they will be running with screen open. Just because you never heard of anyone having heat or other issues with a laptop, doesn't mean you won't get them in the car. Theres just a ton of other things that can come into play.

The thing about carputers, laptop or desktop, is that unless you are buying tried and tested hardware, there is just no way of knowing how it will perform in the car. I get complaints all the time from people who installed a computer, and they love what it can do, but then they tell me of how much work it was to get this or that to work right. Laptops sound like there just what you need for a carputer, there small, low power, and relatively cheap, problem is there is alot of very minor things that can go wrong that will just ruin your whole experience. i.e. the display automatically will reset to the LCD panel rather then the external one with starting up, it won't turn on unless the panel is open, you can't get it to turn on automatically, etc. All these things probably have work arounds, but the problem with laptops is that its much much harder to work around these things. With an ITX or desktop like computer, if the thing over heats, you just toss on a bigger fan, with a laptop, its very hard to just swap out parts or upgrade it.

It will be much slower and yes probably more expensive then a laptop, but in my experience, VIA ITX systems are just more reliable and usually much easier to install to get it to do just what you want.

 

But in order to use either a laptop or a carputer, you will need a screen from DigitalWheelz right? And screen for 2005 G35 is not still available. So does it mean that using a laptop/carputer is NOT an option today for a 2005 G35 sedan.

 

Any response experts? I am excited with this whole concept of a fully functional computer (either a laptop or a carputer). But I am not sure of my options. Which screen can be used with 2005 G35 sedan?

 

Well, Digital Wheels is working on a 2005 model I belive. You could just buy a touchscreen, if thats the way you want to go, and mount it somewhere. But then it would look out of place, or you could build a custom enclosure to house it, but thats a hassle. I'd wait for the new Digital wheelz screen to come out. In the mean time, build your comp the way you like it. Research powersupplys, look into "front end" programs.

Best.

 

Exactly. I wouldn't like the screen to be mounted on the windscreen with wires hanging. I guess I would have to wait till DigitalWheels's new screen housing is released. As for the computer, I will most probably use an extra laptop sitting at home. (saves me some money ) Thanks USI35

 

Just got a response from Digital Wheels guys. I guess they are looking at December to release screen for 2005 G35 sedan. Well, that will a long agonizing wait..

 

I'm just about finished designing the 2005 prototype. I should have pictures and more information up by this weekend.

 

Cool.. can not wait to get more info

 

I am not sure if this is the right place to post but i was wondering if someone here can help me. I am having some problems with my carputer. This is my problem. Every morning when I turn on my car, the carputer turns on but it takes an abnormally long time to load up. It just hangs on the Motherboard company's logo. However if i turn on the car later on in the day afterwards, it boots up regularly. It just seems like if the carputer wasn't used for a long period of time it takes a while to boot up, but if it was used within a short period of time, it doesn't seem to have any problems booting up. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

What do you have it set to(hibernate, standby, on/off), and also what do you use for a startup/shutdown controller?

 

I found that sometimes it would hang trying to read the USB ports (I think?). Anyway I disabled some of the extra boot up options in BIOS (as I recall) and it started up quicker and more reliably.

 

I had similar issues with a laptop that would take forever to boot when it was real cold out, i.e. winter, but would be fine in warm termperatures or after it warmed up by itself.

 

i have it set to on/off when the car turns off... i am using the m1-atx power supply... so far no dead battery issues ... knock on wood... i recently updated the bios and video card (using an epia m1k mobo), but it doesn't seem to have made a difference... i thought it could be a power issue, but now that i think about it... i don't think that is the reason... i'll try to disable some of the bios start up options and see if that helps... but if anyone else has any suggestions, i'm more than happy hear and try them... thanks again everyone

 

Hi God,
I was just wondering if you have any update on the G35 2005 prototype..

 

You may also want to go into msconfig and disable some of the windows services, that should help out a bit too. and...check out this site for some of the optimizations..
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

....skip all the extra programs they talk about, just tweak the settings that are shown there.