Netbook / Tablet PC for incar sound system.

[Bearded-flower]

Ok, heres my idea, I want to get some sort of laptop / netbook / Tablet PC and i plan to wire it upto my car sound system and run everything through there, like a media hub.
Now i also want to wire it into the car so it runs off the car battery.
Now thats where i need you guys, because its running off of the car battery, I want something that isnt uber power hungry, could you guys and gals recommend something that wont drain all my power, and isnt too expensive.
Thanks.
- Inuit-joe

[Fafler]

Something based on the BeagleBoard http://beagleboard.org would be great for the purpose. It's a small single board computer based on a 600 mhz ARM core. It is able to run Ubuntu, Android and several other Linux distributions. A ready-to-use handheld computer based on BeagleBoard is the Pandora http://www.open-pandora.org/ although it's not shipping yet.

Asus has also made a touch version of the Eee line, but i can't remember what it's called. And when apple releases iPad, were going to get a lot of small ARM and Atom based touch devices to play around with. Just look at the amount of iPod and iPhone look-alikes.

A small ARM device would use much less energy than a Atom device and still be more than fast enough for your project.

One thing you should note is that depending on design, touch screens work with either finger touch or a small pen. You would want one you can use with your fingers.

[Bearded-flower]

Yeah, im really only going to use it to manage my musics. so it dosnet have to be that powerfull. i will be more than likely to hook up a external HDD to it. sooo...