NAVISURFER II gets a hefty overhaul ($400 Dbl Din Computer)

Engadget article

VIC Ltd online store (currency drop down menu up top)

Pricing seems too good to be true...come on, someone try one.

 

Tempting

 

It "looks" too big to fit in the dash for some reason... overkill?

 

The hard drive would be toast in under 3 months with vibrations from off-road driving... never use a conventional hard drive with moving parts for off-road use.

 

DevL, Not true...until I upgraded to a SSD last year, my regular HDD was in my trunk for almost 5 years (and it still works...it's not it my vehicle anymore). For 4 of those years, it was sitting less than a foot away from my subwoofer. I initially put it there as an experiment and ended up leaving the whole PC there to see what it could withstand...much to my surprise, I never had a problem with the vibrations.

The thing that will determine how good or bad this product will be is the software. They need to make sure it is very easy to use and making sure that it is touchscreen friendly. They need to make it as easy to use as a normal radio/nav unit and not like a normal computer with tiny fonts.

 

Agree on this. If you look at the demo video on their website, you see a guy operating the applications with a stylus, tapping through lots of menus. There's no way I'd want to go through an interface like this just to listen to music or access the GPS. When it comes to car interfaces, simple is even more important.

 

Make sure you look into the specs on these. These units seem to be built for European consumption, and the radio/TV standards are different then here in the US. Also note that these appear to be no-mech units, i.e., no DVD/CD drive. Depending on your use, this may be good or bad.

 

Guess you'd have to use a USB Optical drive to load stuff.

If you really wanted an SSD, you could probable swap it out.

I'd like to see some modders load up Android on it or some other simple touch-screen enabled OS.

 

Looks like a good idea that needs to evolve and refine more. I'll wait a few years and see.

 

question I have is how the hell do you mount the sucker?? there's no mounting holes or anything - what are we supposed to do, drill our own holes for it?? That will go well with a motherboard sitting right underneath it. If they expect us to install it with a cage, hell no... that would definately have vibration problems (offroad use or not).

I like the looks and thought of it, and the price is not that bad either... and honestly I wouldn't care too much about the radio anyways - I'd just tether my iPhone to it and stream the radio through Ootunes or use Pandora, and for the times I'm not in cell coverage (which is too often - thanks AT&T) there's always my mp3 selection

 

What kind of a vehicle? A sub woofer vibration is not a problem... offroad jolts and vibrations are much worse becasue they are so much larger. Ive killed several hard drives with offroad use and know several people who killed the hard drives in their Jeeps.