Don’t you just hate it when you see some driver pull a bonehead move, only to realize he’s been too busy playing with his audio system to fully comprehend the magnitude of his boneheadedness? Well just imagine if instead of a mere audio system, he had an entire computer in the dash. Imagine if she was composing a document while sorting through photographs.Or maybe, horror of horrors, playing some sort of demented driving game. All the time while piloting two tons of speeding, metallic doom. How bad would that be?

Such a possibility isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it may seem. With DVD players and GPS systems becoming de rigueur, and many of today’s audio systems already sporting more controls than the entire interior of a Kia and ample facilities for iPods and USB drives, can full-blown computers be that far behind?
Actually, they’re already here. And we’re not talking glorified calculators either.

Take a gander at the soon-to-be-released Atlas CPC-1200. Hailing from Michigan-based Azentek (www.azentek.com) and winner of the “Best of CES” award in the Car Tech and GPS category at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Association show in Las Vegas, the CPC-1200 promises to handle virtually anything your home PC can handle.

Certainly the current parts list is nothing to laugh about. At its heart is a reasonable 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor with a 667MHz front side bus, along with 1GB DDR2 memory, (upgradable to 2GB), a 120GB hard disk, and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. The system, is about twice the height of a regular car stereo (called “double-din") and features a 6.5-inch touch screen/display, hybrid flash/hard drive technology for instant-on capability, 5.1 sound, and Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system.

What can you do with it? You can listen to music and watch movies stored on the hard drive, hammer out documents, archive and organize photos, connect to the Internet, download navigation information, connect Bluetooth devices, play games, listen to and create emails via built-in voice recognition, watch what’s going on behind you with an optional rear bumper cam, and, with other optional hardware, monitor critical vehicle diagnostics. You can even compute in the front seat while the kids watch a movie in the back.

The question is then: What can’t you do with it?

Next: How to get yours

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3