I need some advice here. I'll be the first to admit that I want to build a CarPC just for the sake of building one.

That said I want the following features:

1) GPS Navigation (I'm currently using my PDA for this and would like a more 'integrated' solution.)
2) CD Playback capability
3) DVD/Video playback capability
4) MP3 playback capability (already taken care of by the Rio Car/empeg.)

and of course must "play nice" with the empeg. The rest is icing on the cake.

Hardware:
I currently have a Mac mini and can think of no better hardware suited for this application (especially now that the CNX-P1900 is available.)

I will need to acquire a touchscreen.

The issues I see are many:

Boot-up time. As far as the main music system in the vehicle goes - Anything that takes longer to boot than the empeg is unacceptable. For this reason I want to leave the empeg installed and use the carputer through its AUX inputs.

Peripherals. This may just be a personal thing but I feel that keyboards and mice have no place in a car. I would require a front-end software package that would allow all interaction via the touchscreen.

The vehicle I'll be installing this in is a Scion tC. There is no real room anywhere in the console for a screen and the empeg. Also, I believe that the airbag is too close to the top of the dash to allow mounting there. Some fabrication may be in order.

OS:
MacOS - The issues I see here are boot-up time: ~53 seconds from power on to use (is there a way to speed this up?) Also there is no 'good' GPS navigation software for the mac (Route66 is available but is not a true turn by turn solution and gets terrible reviews by people using it.) Would Windows navigation software run reliably in VirtualPC?

There are some front-end software packages that could satisfy my 'no keyboard/mouse' requirement.

Linux - I could install Linux on the mini. This would probably be the most flexible solution although I'm not in any rush to replace MacOS. I'm pretty sure that with some kernel and init script manipulation I could get the boot time to an acceptable level. There are some front-end packages but again there is little to no navigation software. I guess Wine is an option but this isn't ideal.

Windows is right out (nor shall thou count to 2 less thou proceedeth to 3.) I have my hardware platform in hand and would rather not build up another new PC.

Unless I'm missing something (and I probably am) it seems that things just aren't 'mature' enough to accomplish my list of requirements. I guess that another option is to buy a half-din DVD/CD player (that just happens to fit perfectly in the storage tray under the empeg) and to wait for things to get to the next level?

Any thoughts?

You've already stated that you didn't want to build another computer, but I'm doing exactly as you want to do now in an Acura Integra using a Via Epia Mainboard in a Casetronics case (mounted in glove box) running Windows XP. The touchscreen is a T View (which was cheaper and works better than the lilliput I also had) and is mounted in dash in a retractable housing gotten from www.digitalww.com. This elminates the need for a mouse. I'm running Frodoplayer as the main front end and I have Empegface running on top of the front end to keep track of the Empeg stuff as I cannot see the Empeg screen when the touchscreen is out. I've just simply run a crossover cable to the PC. I am also controlling XM radio from the touchscreen and the sound from the PC is run into the Aux In on the empeg. The GPS software I'm using is Destinator but have recently got Iguidance but havne't installed it yet. I had Mappoint but was not happy with it. I've been very happy with Destinator. The Frodoplayer software has an on screen keyboard that can be accessed at most any time. This makes it easy to enter in addresses for GPS routing and doing searches. Obviously this is all for Windows software but you may want to rethink your plan as there do not seem to be the software resources available for Mac to do what you're wanting. Although there are some listed at www.mp3car.com.

Well I have built 3 CarPc's now (still using my Empeg here but one of these days I will find a UI I like)

Best one I ever built was a 1.2Ghz P3 with 512 running Windows ME from power off to UI up and music playing was 13 Seconds.
But I had to hack the box a bit.

Lots of people think that ME was evil but I didn't have any issues with it, I used it for two reasons

1. Seeing I installed smoothwall on the dell system it came on I have a lic for it.
2. boot time 13 seconds from full power off to up and playing music is Dang fast.

I have one app that ran and all other services turned off it was very stable for me, with fewer issues then 98 had on the same hardware.

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Windows ME

Windows ME? Ewwwwwwwww...

I agree, ME was completely evil. However, it was probably chosen for it's hibernate/sleep ability I would guess.

Probably OK if you didn't mess with it installing and uninstalling stuff.

Well tehcnically OEM only need to be sold with hardware, it was never registered with that dell and dell wouldn't sell me a system with no OS at that time, so I would bet MS would be hard pressed to get me on anything, it was installed on one computer only and registered to that computer (so what if it wasn't the system it came bundled with.

and the 13 seconds with from power off not standby or hib.
Win 2000 on the same system was 59 seconds.