Laptop drives are better since they can tolerate temperature extremes better (your car will sit outside in the cold, plus it will sit in the sun and get scorching)
Also, Laptop drives, as mentioned before, can tolerate bumps and knocks a great deal better than a desktop drive.
On the other hand, Laptop drives are costly and don't hold as much (key factor when you want to have loads of music available)
Desktop drives are not as great at working in very hot or very cold conditions, so perhaps some insulation would help... keep the heat/cold out. Also, if you used some sponge or something, the drive would be cushioned against the worst bumps, so it would tolerate being driven around much better.
Plus, Desktop drives are very cheap nowadays - a thirty gig 5,400 rpm drive (you do not need super speed to listen to music!) will set you back about $50-70 (guesstimate conversion)
So i'll leave the choice of drives up to you.
Processor wise, the MAIN consideration is: Are you going to use this machine to watch DVDs or to watch DivX encoded films? If so, you will probably want to steer away from the VIA Epia CPUs, since they lack the power to play DVDs without stuttering, but for just music, they are preferable due to reduced heat output etc.
Ram, again, if you want to watch movies, then 256 to 512 megs of ram would be nice. If all you want to do is listen to music then 128 or EVEN (Cough) 64 megs of ram would be okay.
Power:
You have two options available. Either you invest in an inverter (this takes the 12volts of your car, and bumps it up to 120/230volts AC) and then use a standard PSU.
OR with a bit of searching, it is possible to locate ATX PSUs designed for use on 12/24dc, which is perfect for the job in hand, but sometimes these PSUs can be expensive for their output.
Finally, the main problem you will have to deal with is heat.
Just leave your car out in the sun for a while, and get in. Feel the dashboard. Inside a car, left in the sun, the temperature can reach highs of 50c! So that means that if you use a hot-running CPU (well, hot running compared to an Epia) then it may well be running at 60-70c, which is not a good thing. Epias produce less heat, but they will struggle to keep cool when the ambient air is 50c.
You have several ways of solving this problem:
You could duct your blower/Air conditioning to blow cool air over the computer, but bear in mind that in the winter when you set the heat to full, your computer will get full heat also, so consider having a way of shutting off the air to the computer.
You could get a low power CPU (VIA Epia) and then stick a fat copper heatsink on it (SLK 700, 800 or 900) so that it will get rid of heat easily.
You could Watercool the system, and put the radiator somewhere where the air is cool.... however, don't be tempted to make the computer a part of your cars cooling system - since the water going round that is kinda warm (like 80-90c) so that would cook your CPU.
You could just ignore the problem and only use the computer when it's cool inside the car.
Hope that I helped you make some decisions there, or that I alerted you to potential problems before you went and spent money... I deliberately left this open to you, since I have no experience, and this is all depending on budget, your needs, and other factors (such as if you want to be able to plug in a keyboard and mouse, then play shoot-em-ups in your car
)
Blueacid
