I am thinking about rigging up s computer in my car and installing an lcd in the dash to watch dvds and use a navigation system. Right now I have an old laptop that I am thinking of using. My questions are... Is there any way I can configure the laptop to power on when the car is turned on and then boot right into the navigation program? Also is there any way that the computer can go into the shutdown process when the car is turned off rather than a just pulling the plug?

I don't think you can get it to boot up at engine startup. For power you would have to be using one of those car adapters that they sell for like $50. I have one. They're the DC to AC converters you plug into the lighter socket. (It seems kinda pointless though cause your computer just turns around and converts it back to DC.) You can edit the registry to run the navigation program on start up. Get some kind of registry tool like RegCleaner for this. It's a lot easier than having to do it manually. If you have programmable buttons on your computer (my laptop has 3, I don't know about other people), you can set one of them to run the shutdown program to turn off your computer. That is if you have a computer designed for windows where the OS can turn the computer completely off. Hope that helped. <><><>Tope<><><>

Gave me more to think about, thanks. Anyone else?

In some states it's illegal to have electronic devices visible to the driver. Back seat is OK. GPSes OK. TV monitors not OK. Laptops not OK. Just something to look into for your area. Best luck, Bob