Car: 2004 Toyota Corolla
Initial Impressions:
When the Car2PC first arrived, I was really excited. The device looked very well put together and fairly well documented. I didn't waste any time going to my car to install it.
Installation:
Installation was extremely simple. The hardest part was getting my radio out because the socket wrenches that I had were just barely long enough to reach the bolts. After getting the stereo out, installing the Car2PC adapter was very simple. I took some pictures during installation, but all of them came out extremely blury. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until I had my Dash back together. There was a problem with my digital camera and I had to take the pictures that I do have with a webcam attached to my laptop.
I opted to run the cable for the Car2PC into the small fold down bin in the center dash of the Corolla. The cable stores nicely in the bin, and I can just open the bin up and pull out the cable. Currently, I do not have a Car PC in this car, so I'm using the Car2PC adapter with my laptop.
Usage:
I must say I've had several problems using the Car2PC adapter with my latop. Here are a few problems that I encountered:
I had trouble getting the Winamp plugin to work. This is probably my fault. I quickly became impatient and tried the Windows Media plugin instead. It seemed to work fairly well. For some reason winamp would not detect the plugin. I tried using Winamp off of the CD and downloading Winamp 5 something. Neither seemed to work. Any suggestions?
When using the Windows Media plugin, I could not get the rewind to work. Fast-Forward would work just fine, but rewind did not. This proved to be very annoying because I was listening to some audio books. The audio books were really long files. If I missed something I either had to go back to the beginning of the file and fast-forward all the way to where I was, or just forget about it and move on.
The windows media plugin also seemed to have problems loading playlists. I'm not sure if this was my PC acting up, or interaction with the Car2PC device. When loading some playlists, Windows media player would freeze for several minutes. I highly doubt this was my PC. It's a Pentium M 2.0Ghz with 2GB of RAM. No idea what it was, and it did not happen every time I switched between playlists.
Overall Impression:
I think the Car2PC is a great buy. I had considered getting just an AUX adapter for my car, but I really really love the added control that the Car2PC device offers. Really, the price isn't much, or any different than buying a standard AUX adapter for the factory stereo. However, I have encountered a few problems with the Car2PC device, but hopefully those will be worked out in later versions of the software.
I also like the factory look that Car2PC allows me to have. When I do install a PC in my car, nobody will know by looking because I just have the factory radio.
Pictures:
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