EVDO may not mean much to you right now but it will soon. The need for mobile high speed Internet connections is a reality. Traffic prediction, mobile email and web, streaming media, and everything else we take for granted in our stationay houses needs to make the leap to our cars. that includes you people in trailer parks.
We first had the ability to analog dial with our cell phones and that was neat. Then we could use GPRS, then EDGE, now with the promise of EVDO, there is a light at the end of the narrow spectrum. The FCC, relics in their own time, are still making things difficult for progress. If we as a people cannot rid this government of the FCC’s shackles, we will surely be left behind. How do you like that for doom and gloom? I have to stop writing or I’ll say something mean and get a visit by people in dark glasses and cheap suits.
Car PCs
It’s not that I don’t like working with fiberglass. Ok, actually, it is that. I”can” make things from fiberglass but it ends up needing so much work that in the end, it should have been left in more capable hands. One day I’ll go take a proper fiberglass fabrication class. Until then, I’ll use the custom shop down the road. Alpha Audio here in good old Austin, TX currently has my 8″ touch screen and a portion of my center console. Yeah, that photospread on my neato mount? It was screaming “steal this car, or at least break in and gut it”.
I should have the re-fitted center console back on Sat which means the bulk of the install will be done. Ok, I copped out and asked the installer where the 12V switched wire was too. Hey, I dont have time or desire to risk my car’s logic unit playing the voltmeter game with every wire.
The more I look at the strapping tape I used to keep the CPU in place the more I dont want to show you pictures of it. Ok, need to get that sorted before sat…
Car PCs
Getting a PC or Mac installed in your car requires a few hurdles, but no more than a mildly custom stereo install. But before we endeavor to add a PC to a car, we must ask, what is it going to do for ME? The basics are playing DVDs, encoded movies, MP3s, GPS and TV. Ok, but that’s not strictly the domain of computers, Alpine and the rest of the mobile audio pack have been offering that for a while. It’s the Internet we want. We want mobile access to traffic maps, email, and our blogs and of course, Google. The pioneers in this space were Wardrivers and they were able to get access through the simple recipe of laptops, WiFi cards, highly sensitive external antennas and people not securing their access points. It worked a treat for those who wanted to hunt down a signal, stop the car, check email, download something from Consumption Junction and move on. Being the needy humans we are, that was just not enough. Ok, it was fine for 5 minutes but we got over the shiny shiny of just having it there and now we demand it to be available like a utility.
Wireless providers have been offering up “broadband” access through connection cards and phones over GPRS / EDGE for a few years now. Broadband has been defined by these telcos as pretty much anything faster than dial-up. For the road warrior that doesnâ™t ever see a phone bill, the people who read Robb Report because they are actually shopping and VPs who ask and get what they want, the price never factored. For the rest of us schlubs, we scratched our heads when our wireless providers got us all frothy over “new broadband through your phone” only to have sales people who know nothing about the technology and prices per KB that sound like 1986 CompuServe pricing.
I recently went out to the local providers, spoke to sales people, investigated technology and came up with some interesting facts about what it takes to get connectivity to a “tethered” device.
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Car PCs