or the glove box

 

The glove box would be a little small unless you get one of the Sony mimi deck ones. I would have to say the spare tire well or under the front seats would probably be your best options. If you are going to keep the thing on all of the time how do you plan on keeping it charged and always on? No to mention why would you need one perminatly mounted? You usually tune the engine then take it out. Just curious what your motives are.

 

If you use the computer for other things (storing/playing mp3's) then you need it in there more than just to tune smile.gif. Yea, power on/off would be my question. I guess you could utilize the hibernate feature and set it so when the power cuts off it hibernates. I am not sure if you can set it to power up on start tho :.

 

I don't know what you think about Apple, but this would be pretty sweet...

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Plus it's tiny.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of something like this:
[urll]http://www.ryanspc.com/carmp3/mp3player.html[/url]

And no, I wasn't planning on going quite as far as that guy - no equalizers or cruddy looking speakers in a homemade pine box.

While I don't know much about the electronics of my vehicle, I would expect to run it from the same power feed as the cigarette lighter and other accessories. Would only be powered when the key is in either On or Acc. Per the article mentioned, the HDD would be read only meaning that powering off would be safe.

Oh, and one pet peeve about my (our?) car. Why does the cigarette lighter only work when the key is in?? It's the only vehicle I know that behaves that way.

On a different note, I've noticed that there appears to be some sort of power cable running into the driver seat (don't remember if there was one under the passenger seat). I don't have power or heated seats... so why would there be such a cable?

 

Unplug it, what ever doesn't work anymore is what it is hooked up to.

The DC-input goes off when the key is out so morons like me don't use up the battery when we leave our cell phone charger plugged in.

 

That plug mentioned is for the seatbelt indicator light and chime.

As mentioned above, the cig lighter is set up so if you leave, say a radar detector or something plugged in all the time, it will shut off with the car. You can, however remove the accessory wire from the lighter and add an always on wire instead. Just remember not to kill your battery tongue.gif