The big win for the TuneSync and likely it's kin, is that it will charge when your laptop isn't there, and sync when it is, without faffing about with cables.

No, Unix time is generally assumed to be UTC.

Nice try, though.

Ah, early Mini, Smart, same thing. (The mini's probably lighter. ;)

I remember seeing this done with a late '60s Eldorado... that would be a much more rational car-hauler. I can't imagine this thing could get out of it's own way with anything bigger than a Smart on board.

@TrackSol
I worked on a project to build tags just like this for rental car companies (to automate checkin/checkout).

*All* we cared about was VIN, odometer, and fuel level. VIN is easy, and I believe mandated in later cars. Odometer and fuel level tended to be proprietary (non-standard), but once we had the VIN, we knew how to get the other stuff.

@MasterCKO

No, it isn't 'thin'. It *looks* like it's supposed to drape over your dashboard, but I can assure you that the space under that thin-looking shape is very definitely filled with chunky GPS goodness...and that's where the dock connects.

It's *very* bulky, and hard to mount well. And it's slow, and the software sucks.

I think the extra 3 months is because the 'end of june' software update that is supposed to make the device vaguely capable of routing is going to drop after everybody's initial 3 months would have expired. I think the take rate on the service would be close to zero with the current software.

I have one, and it has great promise, but it is *so* not there yet.

In-store activation? That's a dealbreaker for me. I refuse to deal with cell phone store bozos.

Not browsing anything...I want a small ssh client.

It needs the rest of the feature set of a normal automotive GPS (waypoints, find along route, etc), but they know that.

The routing algorithm is good if you're dealing with freeways, but doesn't know a thing about secondary roads. It's suggested some creative routes to avoid snarled freeways (though only on other freeways and highways), but it completely misses a secondary road that is a much shorter path in and out of my town. Once it gives up on turning me around, it usually takes 20min off my ETA. (To be fair, my TomTom 910 had the same blindness about that road)

Carpool lanes are the devices achilles' heel. It often reports that a highway is flowing only because the carpool lane is moving. But as it doesn't know if I'm going to be using the carpool lane or not, it can't make routing decisions well if the highway is stopped and the carpool lane is moving. This is a hard problem, and they're aware of it. (IMO, they should just ask "Use carpool lanes?", which will both bin the data they get from the field and let the device route accordingly)

The software is basically a solid beta right now, I reported half a dozen issues on my first drive.

The text-to-speech quality is laughable. It's not quite The Voice of BART (for you SFians), but it's close.

The device is *huge*. It has the same screen real estate as my portly TomTom, but the shape is just awkward to mount. I had a hard time finding somewhere to mount it that didn't obstruct a large portion of my forward vision. I normally mount GPS units to the left of the instrument pod, and there was just no way to make that work, even in an A6. Haven't tried fitting it in the Miata yet, but that's going to be a challenge.

But my Number One Gripe is that the minimum brightness on the LCD is still too bright for use on backroads at night.

It's all about the Casio EX-F1 for me. Pretriggered 60fps, 300fps movies....drool.