Knez's Home

The software requirements for in-car use is vastly different from that of standard desktop machines. For starters, the screen is much smaller (in my case about 7 inches). Secondly you can't be messing around with a mouse and keyboard while you are driving. I know what you are saying, "Thank you Captian Obvious". Well smart ass, I'm not done yet. If you are using a touchscreen interface, the interaction points must be large enough to hit while you glance at the screen. This requires some pretty large buttons and makes screen real-estate pretty expensive.

Current Favorites

Mainly I use my car-computer for two things, music and GPS. For the GPS I just use the software that came with it, Delorm Street Atlas 2005. Its the best of the standard PC GPS software packages as far as usability on a touch screen (and that is not saying much). It does have some very nice voice input and output features which can be a big help in the car.

As for music, I have tried lots of the free software packages taylored for in-car use. So far I have found MediaEngine to be the best. Its realtivly easy to use and it looks great.

The Best Software Ever

Being that I am a software engineer, I have thought about writing my own software for the car computer. I have started it although I am probably only about 3% done. So far this is what I am looking for

Full screen interface (never see windows)
GPS support
MP3 support
DVD movie support
Voice input and output
Visualation support while playing music
Beautiful interface with large buttons for ease of use

Those are about the most vague requirements ever, but hey, I am my own client so I can change the requirements all I want :) Hopefully I will actually have a version of the software to post sometime soon, but I would not hold your breath.