IMAGE GALLERY Look at some of the products on display at CES    RELATED VIDEO CNN's Rick Lockridge reports on the onboard automotive personal computer Windows Media 28K 56K

January 11, 1999
Web posted at: 7:11 p.m. EST (0011 GMT)

LAS VEGAS (CNN) -- With all the talk about convergence at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, it's interesting to see the PC and auto electronics industries come together with products that give drivers new capabilities while they drive. No more "virtual" driving on the Information Superhighway; now you can have all the data you need in your dashboard.

Clarion's $1,300 AutoPC enables drivers to talk to their cars, and the devices respond with pleasant-sounding chimes.

Steve Roth, marketing manager for Clarion, says the AutoPC can be a useful source of such information as navigation, addresses, real-time traffic updates, weather reports, news and even e-mail.

Powered by a Pentium MMX processor, the AutoPC runs a "light" version of Microsoft Windows. It can play CDs and your CD-ROMs, upload information from a palmtop organizer and take voice memos -- or you can just talk to it if you feel lonely.

Roth says the system uses state of the art technology: "We've made the entire system voice-activated and text-to-speech, so that drivers can always keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road."

Clarion says its AutoPC will be available nationwide by the end of this month.

If you want to hear your e-mail instead of having to read it, the new car-computer entry from Visteon features a synthetic-voiced personal assistant who has a lot to say.

Visteon's Lori Markatos says the system is for drivers who spend a lot of time behind the wheel. "This is an attractive system for the road warriors, the business professionals that are in the vehicle a lot of the time. They don't want to be isolated just because they're on the road. They want to have access to information and be able to communicate to the outside world."

Rollout for this product is scheduled for later this year at a price to be announced at that time.

Many will be concerned that in-dash computers will provide yet another distraction preventing safe driving. But one thing is for sure, a classic Packard on the CES show floor, outfitted with 16 megs of memory and more processing power than the biggest computers of its era, looked a lot better than any beige computer box.