Car Digital Assistant

suman28 writes "The Japanese company Clarion plans to sell a car with built-in PC that runs Windows which car browse the web, play tunes and store an address manager. The stats on the computer are nice - a 166 MHz RISC processor with 64MB RAM and 8MB video. That seems like a lot for a car."

Comments

Well, Clarion is not exactly selling the cars

[bigmouth_strikes]

"The Japanese company Clarion plans to sell a car with (...)"

Clarion is not a car manufacturer but instead a car music system manufacturer. I suppose they will sell this as an aftermarket upgrade or (car) manufacturer pre-installed in high end models.

Re:Here comes a different view

[mhesseltine]

Said handybundler:

I do find it odd that it would actually be considered for legal sale in the US. I thought that screens like VCRs and other equipment placed in immediate driver view were out lawed in most states during the 80's.

Here's the deal; any system from a manufacturer like Clarion, Alpine, Kenwood, etc. has a switched lead that is generally run to the parking brake. Thus, the only time the screen becomes active is when the parking brake is engaged. Otherwise, there is a small LCD display, much like any other radio, and the driver uses the buttons like any other radio.

The rub to this is, nothing requires you to have the unit installed by a responsible and certified installer, who will wire this safety device accordingly. I could buy one of these units, slap it in the dash, and just wire the trigger lead to a pushbutton switch to use it whenever I wanted to. I imagine, though, that if (or more appropriately, When) I got in a car accident while watching TV, the cop would see the screen sticking out of the dash and bust my ass for it.