Forgive me if the has been talked about before. I did some searching but didn't quite find what I am looking for. I have had an iphone for several months now and one of the main reasons i bought one was for listening to my music in my car. I have found using the iphone is this manner to be somewhat unsatisfactory. The main reasons being poor adapters, GSM noise and the probably the biggest reason is that i have come to the realization that i prefer something that stays in my car rather than me always plugging and unplugging it in every ride. I have considered purchasing a new headunit but after some research i am really intrigued with the nokia n800. I have looked at alot of the media apps for it and i am fairly impressed and considering i can buy one for just over $200 it seems like it might be worth it, but before i make that decision I need some advice and answers from some of you that own this specific tablet. My questions are geared toward usage in a car:

1: How is the audio quality coming out of the n800 and going into a car stereo?

2: What can I expect in terms of battery and power usage. ( since i would be leaving it in my car most of the time i would prefer that it boots up relatively quickly or at least if it goes to sleep that it recovers out of sleepmode fairly quickly )

3: What is the highest amount of storage i can put on it?

4: What options do I have for mounting it in my car?

5: How usable and reliable are some of the media players out there (I am paticularly interested in either running canola 2 or ukmp as the frontend to my music collection)

6: I also want to know if i can have the n800 either boot into one of these media players or recover from sleep and go straight into one of the media players.

Any other thoughts on using one of these tablets as a media player (paticularly music ) in a car would be very helpful.

1: not good. despite what people say, the sound quality isnt top notch - at least for headphones. though i think it might be better with a car. i take it you use aux in

2: boot time is 45 seconds, but youre not supposed to turn it off - just put key lock on. in that case boot time is 0,5 seconds your best bet is to have a car charger plugged in anyways

3: 2x SDHC means 2x 16gb = 32gb ATM, 2x 32 in the future. you can technically use a usb stick too.

4: nokia have a car mounitng set, and there are a shtload of third party devices that will do the job, as low as 10 bucks on sites like dealextreme.com

5: i dont like canola... it looks nice but its more or less useless. the scrolling method is ******ed and its generally slow and annoying. the internal media player is more useful for music IMO

6: dont think it can bott directly into it, but you can just minimize the thing when you put on key lock and it will be there when you unlock it again

Just fine over here with a direct RCA connection to my head-unit (CD-changer adaptor on a Toyota Camry).

It'll idle for a good 8 days, but the hot temperatures* in a car environment are going to destroy the battery very quickly, and I wouldn't be surprised if you were down to sub-hour battery life within a couple months.

32GB right now, 64GB should be fairly inexpensive by summer.

Pretty much unlimited. You could build yourself a custom mount of some kind or just pick up a wieldshield/vent/dash mount for pretty much any PDA that'll work just fine.

Fine, though none of them are particularly well-suited to use while driving with the small screen-size.

Yeah, leaving the media player open would work fine.

Honestly, I don't think the device is particularly well suited for the task. I love my N800 as an in-car media player, but leaving it in the car all the time is going to have a major impact on battery life and potentially the LCD (maybe, the device is rated for 14-131°F), and it just isn't 100% for use while driving.

If you were planning to use the device for anything other than just the in-car media player, then I would definitely recommend it, but as you're not, I think you'll be much better off with an after-market head unit (particularly if you can fit/afford a real LCD model).

*A closed-car sitting in the sun can easily reach 130°F with only moderate outside temperatures.

Key lock is pointless in the car, just letting it sleep itself will accomplish the same thing.

Both hyperbolic and highly subjective. Most people love Canola and get a lot of good use out of it (I'm one of them).

Well if youve used any real music player you'd know what i mean... the sole fact it doesnt even support embedded album art is too me freaking annoying

Does too, it just doesn't grab it by default due to copyright issues.

Copyright issue with displaying pics that are stuck in the mp3 files? -.- thats a new one

Don't know about you, but Canola's interface works better for me in the car than Media Player. I'm getting a custom DIN mount made for this later in the month and will be trying to rig up an aux connection on my Alpine headunit to take a 3.5mm jack, and I will be able to connect my N800 to my Nokia car charger and the audio jack in a tidy fashion and do away with my iPod

Now, if only i can get the cabin noise levels below 110 dB. Such are the compromises of a daily driven track Evo :P

Thanks guys for the replys. I am not terribly concerned about leaving the device in my car in extreme weather. I used to own a zune in the summer and left in my car all the time and it seems to work just fine, besides if it does get really hot i would just take it inside. What does concern me is the audio quality. Cptnodegard and GeneralAntillies could you give me a comparison with other devices in terms of audio quality.

Doing what i do i online i have tested a "few" audio players in my days and i dont consider the n800's headphone out sound good in any way. That being said, i'm not sure how most people would look at it with less basis for comparison. I've test all my devices with a A/B switch i have, which connects two sources to one output. Then i play the same song on both devices simultaneousely, and switch back and fro to compare directly. When i compared the N800 to my cowon players, it became clear that i couldnt sell my real audio players the N800's lack of EQ is the biggest downside, and it generally has little to stand up with.
HOWEVER
You're using this for your car, aux in, which means you won't be using an EQ anyways. That makes it easier to say go for the n800, as i think you would need to have a more than decent car setup to really hear any major difference. The n800 isnt that far away from my psp without eq, and as i wrote in a review recently, the psp sound will do the job for 99% of the people in the world. you would basically need to have a very trained ear or a a/b switch to be able to tell the difference from the n800 to something else, so my recommandation would be go for the n800.