Vida & Dice
 

I am wondering how useful they would be for me given my lack of technical ability.
Am I asking for trouble (a little knowledge being a dangerous thing) or will I actually get some benefit from having them. I already have an old laptop (this one) which I could dedicate to it, running windows 10.

Well Maurice you've had a quite a few views and no replies, perhaps it's the respectfulness of the members here as not to offend.

So here goes....under your user name " New Member and total Prat".

I like your honesty.......from your post...."lack of technical ability" and "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing" are in my eyes a good enough reason to leave well alone.

But hey everyone needs to start somewhere...so good luck.:omg_smile:

Thank you V70Zig, you rather confirmed my suspicion.
(in, I must add, a most diplomatic way)

Installing Vida on a laptop has proven difficult for lots of people...and some gave up........Getting the Dice working has been the same for many.

Should you want to.......then I would advise getting in touch with a member on here.....cheshired5.... who can supply you with a laptop fully loaded with Vida and a Dice unit or VCXNano, both work well and can communicate with our cars.........then the fun starts....but do you really want to ?

Here to help if I know the answer.......................I take it from your user name that you might be an old bloke like me...Morris Minor ?

Lets just say I start receiving my state pension in November. I've never owned a Morris Minor sadly, but some years back I started writing a book where the head of the Mynah family was Maurice, his wife was Minnie, son was Cole and daughter was Opal.
I enjoyed the puns so I use Maurice Mynah on most of the forums I belong to.
Thanks for your offer of help, but I think I'll stand back from Dice and Vida for now.

Old bloke like me then....a few years for me, but not many for my pension....

And if it helps...I would never consider writing a book...far to far for me.

It wasn't a offer of help for you specifically....as a forum we try to help all...if we know the answer that is..............:teeth_smile:

All the best.

MM: I am considerably older than you and never earned my living in IT but I did set up VIDA/DiCE to run on an old laptop. It wasn't plain sailing but with repeated reading of the notes which came with the VIDA clone software, posts on this forum and repeated attempts which taught me a long list of what not to do. I managed it and have the thing running. It isn't actually difficult but because you are not carrying out the direct instructions of the Volvo Car Company you have to step carefully through procedures which avoid the original instructions from them and use the ones from the sellers of the system which you will buy.

My VIDA is running on Win 7 and I did believe that was obligatory but it would be worth trying to install in on Win10 and see if you can. If not you install a virtual Win7 operating system from someone like Oracle VM VirtualBox which is downloadable from Oracle on the internet and is free. If you read all the postings from people who have managed to install VIDA you begin to see the common thread and the critical points to remember. Since you have a laptop the entire exercise shouldn't cost you more than about £50.

I have been pondering this approach too. I do like doing my research (ask my wife...!) and like to have all the info I can at my fingertips. I have an old Netbook (small laptop) running Win7, so that would , probably, make a good basis?

So now you have two host computer options, the Win7 Netbook and the Win10 laptop. I'd not cart a laptop around the car if it also was needed for other things as dropping it on the garage floor might limit your future use of it, so the more disposable of the two would seem the best bet. The only other thing you might need is an in-car plug in charger to avoid over depending on its battery when using the machine in the car.

Don't talk about the battery... I can only run the radio for a minute (without the engine running) before it cuts out on me and tells me the battery is low...