Ladies & Gentlemen of the class of 2005...

SHOP AT LinITX.COM
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, Linitx would be it.
I sourced several things from other places, mostly screens, and without exception, they have all had to be replaced and usually I just paid the (slight) extra for parts from www.linitx.com
This is the best uk supplier for car pc parts. Chris Shore who runs it is a cracking bloke and will go out of his way to help you. He has given me free technical advice and all the things i've bought there have been great quality. I really am wishing I hadn't tried to save money by buying a screen elsewhere cos i've now had two fail on me!
So my absolute number 1 tip is to buy ALL your parts from them. With the exception of ram and a hard drives (because I already had them) I have now got a completely linitx supplied computer including mobo, case, power, mouse, keyboard, bluetooth, wifi and power regulator. The only thing that was from elsewhere was my first touchscreen (which took ages to arrive, was missing a cable and then failed) and then my lilliput monitor which also has a faulty touchscreen!

Oh and by the way, my power fault seems to be repaired. I changed the power lead and it seemed to do the job! I'm keeping an eye on it and Chris (at Linitx) said if it happens again, send him my power board and he'll replace but hopefully it's ok now.

Random power failure!

Ok this is the weirdest and most crap PC issue I have ever come across! After repeated problem with drivers and things, I decided a format and re-install was in order. All of a sudden when formatting the PC turned itself off and wouldn't power on until I unplugged it and plugged it back in! From then on I couldn't get more than 80% into installing before it crapped out again!
I have checked the temperature, the hard drive, the psu and all seem fine. Finally I reset the CMOS and it then let me install Windows. It seem ok again but then when trying to browse the web it went again. I really have no idea what is causing the problem.
Read all the details on my thread at MP3Car:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=61613

Yet more GPS issues

Another change of heart on the GPS software (didn't I mention it was the trickiest part).
I am now using Map Monkey, a free front end app which uses the Destinator 3 SDK and maps. It works really well although I can't properly test it until I have the PC installed, I really don't fancy taking my computer for a walk!
Mapmonkey is available from www.mapmonkey.net and the destinator sdk and maps can be bought from www.destinator1.com

Don't skimp on screen

Ok, the top tip this week is:
When trying to save money and build a good but relatively cheap car computer, the one place to not scrape a saving is the monitor. I've had no end of problems as you've read and now the touchscreen doesn't actually work, pretty much at all! Fortunately I have arranged to send it back for a full refund and will be ordering a new one from here:
http://www.carcomputer.co.uk/touchscreen/
This is Lilliput's own reseller and thus they sell Lilliput brand screens which are widely regarded as the best (along with Xenarc). I am also getting a 4:3 ratio screen instead of the 16:9 widescreen as I couldn't for the life of me persuade the video card on my VIA mainboard to output in a widescreen resolution!
I'm looking at this screen or rather, I will be :)

Screen arrived... eventually!

DON'T BUY A MONITOR OFF EBAY!!!
Or to be more precise, don't order one from a non-uk based ebay trader. It fianlly came and, in fairness, it is a nice monitor. However it took over 3 weeks from winning the item to receiving it and when it arrived it was missing a cable. Not just any cable, not one I can pop to PC World and replace, oh no. This is a unique cable, only used on these monitors which the whole thing is useless without! I have been on to the seller (which is also very difficult since none of them speak any form of English I am familiar with) and they are going to send the cable on Monday.
Another weekend I can't install the damn thing then!

New Front-End

Well after copying all my music over to the CarPC (just over 10Gb's worth) I realised that Media-Car wasn't gonna cut it. It rebuilds your media database every load which for 2,500+ tracks takes about 5 minutes!
I looked at several others but they are all the same... except one! It's called Media Engine and is available from www.mediaengine.org
It is skinnable and for music playback is second to none. It has a decent interface for other apps too and although not the most complete solution around, it has advanced music databasing and search options which makes it very useful for large collections. It's free too.
As for my ongoing search for GPS software I have found a nice freebie add-on for MapPoint called Advanced GPS which adds journey routing (and related info) to it. I can't really test it until it's all installed but it seems pretty nice. The add-in is available from www.techgt.com/agps

More space

My sister fell off a horse at the weekend and broke her ankle. While I was visiting (and waiting for my girlfriend to get a ticket for the car park) I noticed the rear tyres had rubbing marks on them similar to those that were on ther fronts! Back to carnoisseur I went for more of these:

Spacers did the trick

Well the tyres aren't rubbing anymore but the centre caps still don't quite fit. They are only a few mm out though so I am going to get a mate to route out the centre plastic by enough to get them on. I have measured it and it won't mean going right through the caps so it's all good.
The rear ones might be more involved because it isn't just a depth issue there, the centre of the hub is also too wide. Apparantly this can be simply tapped to shape with a rubber hammer as it is only a soft metal cap... I'll be getting a mechanic to do that though, don't fancy trusting myself to hit my car with a hammer!