My wife had been asking for some sort of GPS for quite awhile now for her XJ. I have it in my XJ and she's always wanting me to take it out and put it in her's (can't cause it's hard wired and perminatly mounted).

We had looked into new GPS units that we could swap between vehicles, but for what we wanted we were looking at $500+. So we had held off as it wasn't an immediate need (though she tried to convince me it was).

I have a good friend, and fellow Jeeper who's a State Trooper and one day I rode with him in his squad car and he was running Microsoft Streets and Trips on his laptop. I had seen this program before but never had the opportunity to play with it. After about 10 mins I was hooked and decided that this was what we were going to do.

So we asked for it for Christmas and got it. Retail is $99 on it with the GPS receiver (not badly priced if you ask me). We went with Streets and Trips 2008. Everyone I read online said it only works with Vista, but I checked the box prior at a store and it says it'll work with XP on the box. We got it installed and it's working fine with XP Service Pack 2.

We than decided that sitting the laptop on our lap just wasn't going to cut it. So I looked into several options for a laptop mount. I saw anything for the $20 cheapo on eBay to the high dollar units at $1000+. Spent a day doing a lot of research and finally found one I liked that was very reasonably priced.

So it showed up less than 24 hours after I ordered it (ordered it the day after Christmas, showed up the 27th). I was anxious to get it installed.

So we got everything layed out. Mount unassembled, streets and trips software, GPS receiver, power inverter, and of course the laptop.



Next step was to assemble the new laptop mount. It went very easy for the most part and I was surprised at how stout the unit was for what I payed for it. Looked like it was going to suit our needs just fine.



Next was installing it. I spent a lot of time holding it up with the laptop on it and adjusting it to make sure we got a prime location so that we could easily adjust it for different situations. I didn't want to hinder leg room for the passenger, I also wanted to make sure it could be moved so that it sat over the passengers legs if they wanted to use it. And also wanted to make sure it could be easily placed for the driver to use it but not hinder the line of sight and also not hit the gear selector. After messing with it for awhile I found a good location for it.

Installed it by simply drilling 4 holes in the transmission "hump" and putting in 4 bolts with fender washers and lock nuts on the back side. It's very sturdy.

A few installed pics.











Overall we're very happy with the setup and have less than $300 in it total (not including the laptop of course). I'd highly recomend all the products we used and it's a cheap alternative to the high dollar GPS units if you already own a laptop.