iPaq 5970 with Kane Car Gear.
Not sure I would want a laptop screen wedged on top of my dashboard!
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'laptop wedged on dash for no dosh'
with digicam mounted below scuttle to see stones coming for the radiator maybe? :-)
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If you want all the benefit of sat nav at much lower cost, buy a map and/or go to the the AA euro route planner on its site.
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If you want all the benefit of sat nav at much lower cost, buy a map and/or go to the the AA euro route planner on its site.
What is this, the Viz handy hints page?
Why go to all the bother and expense of maps? Simply pull over every time you see a pedestrian and ask directions.
Oh, and thank you for that thought Phil. I can just see the conversation with the police:
"Evening sir, would you mind telling me why you were staring intently at your laptop whilst swerving all over the road?"
"Er, I'm avoiding the stones, officer "
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Just trying to offer a bit of common sense, sorry if I have got you upset. Sat nav just seems to be utterly pointless when the tool to do the job already exists at much lower cost - a bit like NASA spending millions developing a biro that wrote in space, when the Russians took pencils!
I can't claim I've never take the wrong exit off the autoroute, but it's not exactly the end of the world and I'd rather be engaged with my driving than passive, letting the gizmos do the thinking for me.
But thank you for the Viz reference, it brought back happy memories
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I have SatNav and its connected to traffic master. Absolutely brilliant, I hate it when I'm driving a different car.
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I should have put a TIC smiley on there Nsar. No rant intended.
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Ah, but does your A2Z warn you of greed cameras?
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Hi guys, yes, the sheer size of a laptop presents an issue. We needed it mostly when navigating around in cities, and in remote forests and for quickly finding nearby accommodation. The laptop was being used by the front seat passenger on his lap and then was put away behind the seat when not required.
However, the laptop's large screen size is a delight when reading maps and the sizeable hard disc means that all the map data [1] could be stored on the c:\ drive.
I have seen that some people who use PC based GPS navigation in their off-road vehicles have built a simple de-mountable platform over the centre console. An alternative solution has been built by a friend here in the off-road club. He has taken apart an old laptop for this purpose, mounted the now flat screen in front of his centre dash panel like a giant mobile phone and stashed the rest of the laptop under his seat for the occasional keyboard input. It works well for him [2].
One of the other issues for the latest high powered laptops is the lack of 12v in-car power leads. This is due to the latest processor chips requiring too much power. The solution aparently is to run a 12v DC to 240v AC inverter and use the standard AC adapter. However, a decent inverter suitable for a laptop is around £80 AFAIK. Can anybody confirm this?
[1] 2 CDs to cover Europe and 1 CD to cover the world (in far less detail, and without the so-called POIs - points of interest - fuel stations, accomodation etc.)
[2] His car? A top of the range 2001 model Mitsubishi Pajero (Shogun).
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Our righteous American leaders want to be given control over the accuracy of the European Galilleo GPS system that is due to go online in a few years time.
www.theregister.co.uk/content/64/34272.html
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