I was already on my 3rd incarnation of my home-brewed carputer when the empeg firesale hit. In my head I figured out how much money and time I'd spent on a 5 1/4" SBC, an 8.4" VGA lcd with touchscreen, gps, DC-DC power supply, etc.. and realized I'd be a complete moron not to buy one. That quickly grew to 3. I've since sold off all of my old carputer stuff.

Nowdays, the carputer route is more attractive than back then with the ready availablity of the small ITX boards and 7" touchscreen VGA LCDs for relatively cheap prices. The various software efforts have come a long way too. If I didn't have my empegs, I'd still be going that route.