for starters, my car is a '97, not bose. since my stereo got stolen a few months ago and ive had to go back to the stock radio ive been thinking about running a laptop in the car. I have an extra laptop at home with a dvd player in it so I would not need to buy a HU that plays dvds or get an aux player. i also have a 300W x 1 amp (nothing huge) powering a 12" RF sub... well it was powering it when i had the aftermarket HU.

1st question - if i have a laptop, screen (tbd), HU, and amp (occasionally xm radio charger or cell phone) all running, is the stock alternator too small to handle this kind of load? what kind of amps should i be looking for to run this without blowing something or killing the alt/battery? im not looking for specific just ballparks here, im still brainstorming.. trying to figure out if i have to consider the cost of a new alternator.

2nd question - what is the best type of screen to run with a computer? i think pretty much any of them will work, i just dont want somethng that won't look that great. any experience/insight on that 7" screen (i forget the brand) that can be housed where the stock stereo goes?

i poked around mp3car.com for a bit but all i found were parts/accessories, and not much on laptop setup.. unless i missed something. any other suggestions? im open to ideas.. thanks

 

I have a laptop running off an inverter and a 7" touchscreen with the 12V regulator spliced into the ACC line, running in both my cars (one '02 and one '04) and never had any problems because of it. At some point (before I started using the laptop for XM) I had a Roady and I'm sure some other crap in the car. Not sure about your '97, but AFAIK it might be just fine to run that stuff.

Since you've been to mp3car, I'm sure you have seen 20 billion posts about this... it's all a matter of preference and budget, just like with any other AV stuff in the car. More expensive screens are brighter and come from reputable companies, while El Cheap-o re-badged stuff will break in 3 days and you won't be able to get a hold of anybody in Taiwan (or whereever they're from). I got 2 lilliputs that I've hacked into the cars and they work fine, while some people got older models that have problems with the touchscreens/drivers/etc.

Chances are if you spend money now and get something decent, you won't regret it later by having to spend more money to fix it or replace it. Stay away from ebay screens unless they can give you a model number so that you can look up reviews, and stay away from composite screens unless you're only planning to use them for video (if you want to be able to read text on the screen from your front-end/media player then VGA is the way to go).

There are a few more threads on carpc's as of late around here... search around and you'll find some good info, I'm sure.

 

thanks for the info viguera. how did you get xm to run on the laptop instead of through the roady?

 

I got an xmdirect from Best Buy and purchased a serial cable from someone at mp3car (they have the instructions so you can make your own too). I then downloaded FrodoSatRadioX and told it the XMD was on COM1, and it was all good from there...

The whole setup was like $75 ($50 for the unit and $25 for the cable). I added the radio to my plan and killed the Roady, and it's been working well ever since. The XMD unit comes with a Terk mini antenna that I put in the rear shelf and ran into the trunk by brake light pod thing.