My Carputer - Which Operating System Should I Use?

My Carputer - Which Operating System Should I Use?

If you are a newcomer to the field of car computers (carputers), you need to appreciate that one of the big design considerations is the amount of power which will be consumed by the computer. In a car, there is not the unlimited supply of power waiting to be tapped from a socket on the wall as you would have in your home. It all comes from the car battery, which has a finite capacity.

The charge level of the battery is continually being topped up by the alternator while the engine is running. Car manufacturers normally equip their car engines with alternators which are rated highly enough to allow the fitting of additional electrical equipment. Fitting a carputer with a high power consumption, especially if you have a powerful audio system in your car, could result in the alternator being unable to supply enough power to maintain the battery in a fully charged state. In addition, carputers often require to be fitted in enclosed spaces, which can make it very difficult to exhaust the excess heat generated by the circuitry. For these reasons, it is advisable to choose a motherboard and processor which have low power consumption.

The down side of using a low power processor is that it is a lot slower than the processors used in the latest cutting edge desktop PC's. This is not an issue for most of the applications which will run on a carputer. Computer games normally require intensive graphics processing. However, it is very unlikely that many carputer users will be interested in playing computer games in their vehicles. The ability to run the chosen operating system is therefore the main constraint which is imposed by the use of a low power processor and motherboard.

If You're using an Apple Mac then you'll want to use OS X. Statistically however, you are more likely to be using an X86 based PC.

With a PC, you have the choice of open source (one of the flavours of Linux), or MS Windows. You can put together a pretty impressive system using Linux, but it can be a tortuous exercise to get it properly configured. For some applications, the Linux software which is available is nowhere near as good as what is available for windows. For most people, MS Windows is the operating system of choice. It does not involve overly difficult installation and configuration, and there is a wide choice of application software available for MS Windows.

Currently, the version of Windows to use is Windows XP. Although SP1 for Windows Vista resolved many of the reasons for the poor reception Vista received when launched, it is still a resource hog. To keep the power consumption low, you should use a less powerful processor than the one in a desktop PC. It makes good sense to use XP for as long as it remains available for sale, as it will run better than Vista on a less powerful processor.

Encouragingly, it looks as though Windows 7 when it finally appears, will have more modest hardware demands. Virtually every reviewer of Windows 7 Beta has noted it both loads faster and runs faster than Windows Vista. My personal findings echo this. I am currently testing the Beta software on an Intel Atom platform which is the same as the one I use for my carputer. So far, it has given me absolutely no cause for concern regarding lack of performance. Bear in mind that this is still Beta code and there is a high probability that there will be a further performance improvement once the code is optimised for the production version.

For now, my recommendation is to stick with XP until Windows 7 is released. If the Beta is anything to go by, the production version of Windows 7 should be rock steady and will not place too high a demand on a low powered carputer design.

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