MIND offers affordable entertainment, office equipment for automobiles
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Car owners and drivers in Jakarta increasingly realize that complaining about chronic traffic congestion is but a vain attempt to relieve stress.
There is actually a string of options of what to do in cars while stuck in traffic jams.
And although getting dressed and brushing your teeth in the car, a la Mr. Bean, might seem a practical thing to do, you'd probably prefer to watch your favorite TV series or to check your e-mail.
Budi Harimawan, a civil servant at a ministry in Jakarta, has installed in his silver Honda New CRV 2002 a complete Windows- based computer with an 8" LCD monitor touch screen, a DVD ROM drive and built-in bluetooth.
He has also installed global positioning system (GPS) software and media car software on the 20 gigabyte hard disk.
Using the built-in bluetooth and his cell phone he can connect to the Internet and check his e-mail while waiting for the congestion to ease.
"Recently, I bought a USB WiFi for the computer so I can browse the Internet when I park my car near an Internet hotspot area," Budi told The Jakarta Post.
For the basic equipment, he paid a quite reasonable price of Rp 14 million (US$1,480).
Budi is among the first four customers of car computer provider MIND, a recently opened private company run by a young gadget freak, Jefry Cucu, 25.
"I've been tinkering to make the equipment work for six months last year. I bought some parts from China, and some others from the U.S.," Jefry said.
"Later I assembled them first in my car as an experiment. When the equipment was proven to be working well, I started selling them to people in my circle," he added.
He said that if car owners imported such equipment from, say, the U.S., the price would be double his price.
"I damaged a number of computer processors during my experiments," he said.
Finally, at the end of last year he succeeded in assembling all the gear to build a gadget freaks' dream.
After installing the equipment into four customers' cars and doing some low-key promotion in Jakarta, he already has a waiting list of dozens.
Now he has installed computers in more than 30 cars.
"I'm building MIND to be a large company," he said. "Now I have a small workshop in Kelapa Gading where customers can see samples of the products," he said, adding that his design was so simple that any regular car workshop in Jakarta could do the cabling required.
"MIND can be installed in any car. I even installed one in a customer's 1995 Toyota Corona," he said.
"The key is to have a good power supply system in your car," he added.
MIND now has four specifications ranging from Rp 10 million to Rp 17 million.
"The most popular type is the one that costs Rp 14 million," he said.
Website: www.id-mind.com