In dash mini laptop?
 

Has anyone here atempted? That's the route i'm considering going if I can keep it clean.

carputer...

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...r-install.html

Very kewl! Where is the keyboard though?

iPad
 

iPad?

Lol i wouldn't do the Ipad till people hack it and allow us to put windows 7 or Mac OSX snow leopard on it. SO that we can do audio controls and so on. Plus the Ipad base one comes with only 16gb(wtf). Great thing get the one were you can use at&t sim card to get internet on the fly :).

Put in a mac mini. You can hide it. plug into any kind of monitor in the dash. Keyboard and mouse are bluetooth. If you have iTunes at home, when you pull into your driveway, you should be able to "see" your home computer and put all the music and movies you want wirelessly. Get really crazy and get a usb broadband adapter and you've got internet.

iPad 3G
 

iPad 3G.... most convenient.

But who would leave anything like a computer sitting in a car....unless it was portable or whatever?

A cool idea anyways.

the iPad won't go in the dash like the OP was asking about. Plus you would need to plug it into the head unit to run sound. If you got rid of the headunit, put in a monitor, hid a mac mini with 3g, you would have itunes, itunes/internet radio, movies, www, dvd's, digital movies, etc. If you did the install yourself, it should be under $1000 (couple hundred for a good monitor, $500-$700 for mac Mini, $100 for Bluetooth keyboard and mouse).
Problems, however may be shutting off the car (should really shut down a computer before you kill power), and routing the right power to the computer. If you were going PC, the boot time would be a problem, but snow leopard has pretty impressive boot times.

all the power issues have been solved years ago. They sell plug and play boot/shutdown power units for the mac mini.

why not just get a Net-book and a wireless keyboard, also utilize the Vga out and connect it to a lcd monitor. I would just hide the net-book under the seat and maybe have it connected to a Inverter. You can get netbooks for as low as $180 ..this by far would be the best option