Crispin is right, I swear by the Toughbook, if you can get one cheap a CF-29 would do all you need (a late one with a faster processor or a CF-30 if you can find one for less than the price of the car). My CF-28 should do it - especially if you use an SSD disk like the police do - they have a version of the CF-28 which they use purely for in vehicele cmera work - filming speeding vehicles etc). You can get in vehicle mounts from Gamber Johnson and RAM mount. Downside of the CF-28 is that as standard it only supports USB 1.1 however I have a 2 port USB 2 PCMCIA card and a bluetooth card which also fits in one of the PCMCIA slots (the CF-28 has a hidden one which you need to take off a bit of the casing. You can get a WIFI driven screen which gives you full touchscreen capability (the CF-VDW07 screen) on a 7 inch screen and you can also get an inbuilt GPS receiver although it is only of use outside a vehicle as it has no external antenna (although it can be modified to fit one).
The Toughbook is Waterproof, drive over proof (they have been tested with a Hummer - actually you can even get a Hummer badged one), bullet proof up to a point and proably bomb proof. They are the choice of most of the US police forces and a large part of the worlds military.
The CF-28 (mark 3) only has a 1ghz Pentium 3 processor but it runs Windows XP fine (if a little slow compared to my Dell) and memory map connecting to a bluetooth GPS receiver/ It has a 13.3 inch XGA touch screen and the wireless screen is daylight readable.
if you want something that you can rely on at all times the toughbook is one of the only truly rugged systems out there.
You can put together a reaslonable system for less than £500 if you are prepared to wait on ebay. My Toughbook cost £250 including shipping from the states, the wireless touchscreen was £80 or there abouts although they often sell for around £500-£600 and on various other ancilliary parts (waterproof keyboard, touchscreen - mine didn't come with it originally, new stylus, Bluetooth card, USB 2 Card and original carrying sling) coming to about £150 all in.
Plus the added advantage is you don't really need to fit it in the car, you can't break it even if you just sit it on the back seat and connect it to the cigarette ligther for power (you can get original Panasonic in vehicle chargers for about £20), you can mount the wireless screen somewhere on the dash (I superglued a HAMA mount on the back of mine so it now fits on a standard Winscreen suction mount), fire it up and away you go - you could even connect the Audio out to one of the FM audio transmitters so you can use it for music as well. Even if it drops off the back seat it isn't going to break - the HDD is shock mounted and it is tested on drops of over 1M onto concrete for it's MIL certification.
On mine when I get around to fitting the mount, I will be extending a USB cable to the front and fitting three in panel USB sockets for a USB GPS mouse, Keyboard and handheld trackball mouse. I already have the keyboard (A lighted mini one) and the trackball. That way I can use the Bluetooth for other things (probably connection to my 3G mobile phone for internet access out in the field.
Oh and just to add, as Crispin said, computers start to fail in low temperatures but the Toughbook has been shown to work in the Antarctic as well as in the middle of the hottest deserts.
Just to add I don't work for Panasonic
, I'm just a convert after 2 1/2 years of ownership and no failures.
and it's just like a desktop PC then. That kind of set up would give you a car PC and a desktop PC but not the portability of a laptop.
