Tomorrow’s smart cars: automotive computing

I am a simple driver. My car is a Buick Century and, as many know, Buicks are neither the… I am a simple driver. My car is a Buick Century and, as many know, Buicks are neither the flashiest nor the most stylish cars in the world. It gets me from point A to point B with respectable gas mileage that appeals to both my love of having money and my liberal guilt regarding global warming.

This being said, sometimes I want more in my car. The stock Buick sound system is fine, but it would be nice if I had more than just an AM/FM radio and cassette deck.

After all, like most college students, the majority of my music is in MP3 or other electronic formats – my iPod broke beyond repair quite some time ago. I always want the ability to check my e-mail or manage my files on the go, but my laptop no longer holds a charge, and I’m too attached to my bank account to sign up for a bloated, expensive cell phone plan that would allow me access to Gmail.

Wouldn’t it be great if the car became intelligent, if our lives online and our lives on the road seamlessly merged?

The engineers at Azentek decided that this would be a perfect idea. Although cars right now seem to burst at the seams with a large quantity of computer-like technologies, cars still seemed incomplete to them.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” they thought, “to have a fully featured computer in your car when you need it?”

The Atlas CPC-1000 and Atlas CPC-1200 computers are designed to integrate with your car and provide handy and useful computing on the go.

They feature full specifications for full-featured functionality, including a fast 1.66 gigahertz Intel Dual-Core processor, 1 gigabyte of on-board memory, 100 gigabytes of hard disk space to store all of your video and music files and a sizeable color screen. The only not-so-desirable feature is that it ships with a specialized version of Microsoft Windows Vista.

You may be wondering why you’d need such a high-powered computer in your car. Just think of being able to play games while waiting for your date to get ready.

You could check your e-mail whenever you pleased or let your passengers watch movies without toting along the DVDs or plugging in their MP3 players. With WIFI capabilities, the Atlas CP-1000 could provide streaming video and audio from the Internet. YouTube on the go!

Azentek would like for nothing more than for the Atlas to replace car radios completely. These are designed for installation in place of a car radio, provide the same audio quality as the radio and plug into the car’s speaker system as seamlessly as a car radio.

All of this combined with Bluetooth and WIFI capability gives the Atlas the feel of a car-command center, moving the electronics in your car to the level once dreamed of in science fiction movies.

As I learned about the Atlas, however, one thing worried me. Do we really want the distraction of the Internet in our cars, right in the driver’s dashboard?

Certainly, the Atlas should be used by responsible drivers who don’t partake in its more distracting features, but I’m sure we all agree: Few people are truly that responsible, and even those responsible few might slip up occasionally and let their attentions waver.

I think it might be helpful to limit the functionality of the Atlas while the car is in drive. Perhaps the computer could prevent a user from accessing any computer other than a media player and an Internet telephone application – after all, playing “Team Fortress 2” on the Turnpike just isn’t a good idea.

My other criticism is the fact that although the Atlas is, for a laptop, rather run-of-the-mill, it costs $2,700.

As someone replied to CNET when reporting the release of the Atlas, it could be cheaper just to buy a Dell or HP and attach it, with glue or bolts, to your dashboard.

Either way, computers in cars might become significantly more common in the near future. Companies may sell directly to car manufacturers, and instead of buying a car for its GPS navigation system, you might choose your next car based on how much memory it has.