DETROIT: Car technology is on the increase with self-driving cars and health-monitoring seats all turning from science fiction to science fact.

As such, when V3's sister site THE INQUIRER headed to the North American and International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit to see some of the latest innovations on show, we were keen to see what they unearthed.

One of the most interesting announcements they came across was from Telsa, which was showing off its Model X SUV featuring an in-built tablet control panel.

The car was actually first unveiled in February 2012, and the Model X SUV is still in the prototype stage. However, with gull-wing doors, a front-mounted boot and seven seats it's clearly no small-scale project. It's also said to have a zero to 60mph time of around five seconds. Speedy.

Based on the four-door Tesla Model S that Tesla also showed off at NAIAS, the Model X features some updates such as all-wheel drive, thanks to an additional electric motor mounted at the front wheels.

The main feature that caught our eye, though, was that the Model X exhibited Tesla's updated in-car control centre that features a 17in capacitive LCD touchscreen, the biggest we've seen in a car yet.

Debuting in the Model S when it ships in the US later this year, the Linux-based technology will allow the driver to manage features such as climate and music control as well as navigation via Google Maps.

Better still, you'll be able to browse the web and program driving settings, such as "ride feel". Such settings allow drivers to optimise the vehicle with sounds to make it feel more like an authentic motor vehicle, because the silent drive on an electric-powered car generally lacks that factor.

The 17in display is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, meaning it will be powerful enough to run a variety of content without lag. However, one drawback is that you cannot view video on the screen, for safety reasons, even when the engine is turned off.

Tesla said that early customers of the technology won't have to pay a penny for it during the first year of use, although monthly pricing might be introduced later on.

Another feature with Tesla's in-car technology is that you can tether your phone or tablet and use its data plan to stream content from your mobile device to the display. Tesla's control centre also has upgradable firmware, giving the driver peace of mind that it is future-proof too.

The instrument displays including the speedometer and fuel gauge are also based on digital displays, allowing the driver to customise what is shown via buttons on the steering wheel.

Deliveries for the Tesla Model X will begin in 2014, however in-car technology will come as standard on the Tesla Model S, which has already started shipping across in the US and can be expected to reach the UK by early 2014.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has updated the recommended Debian Linux build for its low-cost single-board computer a couple of times since we reviewed the credit card-sized Raspberry Pi device in June, and we've been trying out the new versions.

Based on the Raspbian build of Debian, the latest "Wheezy" version of the Raspberry Pi software released on 16 August contains a similar set of development tools to the original build, along with example source code for multimedia functions, according to the Foundation, but has numerous tweaks, including a few to make it more user friendly.

The first thing users will notice if they upgrade is that the newer release throws up a lot more messages onto the screen as it starts, possibly indicating that the device is loading up more drivers than before.

The Raspberry Pi then runs a configuration tool, Raspi-config, which allows the user to set various options, including the keyboard layout, locale and timezone, as well as expanding the root partition to fill up the SD Card, if you are using a larger card than the minimum 4GB size.

As before, typing "startx" at the Bash command prompt loads the LXDE desktop GUI environment, but Wheezy now displays a text message handily informing you of this. Alternatively, Raspi-config lets the user set their Raspberry Pi to automatically boot straight to the desktop on startup.

The desktop environment itself has changed only slightly, with icon shortcuts to all the relevant tools now placed directly on the desktop itself, along with a handy Debian Reference document that loads in a browser.

An extra browser, Netsurf, has been added to the Dillo and Midori options previously available, while the develop tools now comprise the Idle environment for Python, the Squeak programming language, and the Scratch environment, along with a set of sample games and other simple applications.

The Wheezy build also has numerous enhancements under the hood, including taking greater advantage of the processor's floating point hardware.

We found performance under this build still somewhat sluggish, but it must be kept in mind that this is a £25 computer designed for education and experimentation, and not a games console or fully-specced PC.

When I reviewed Microsoft's Office 365 last week, I tested the cloud-based productivity suite on Windows PCs, running either Windows 7 or Windows XP.

To recap, Office 365 provides access to cloud-hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint, plus Microsoft's Lync telephony client and web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

However, with most of the capabilities of Office 365 provided through a browser, it should be possible for users on other platforms, such as Mac or Linux, to gain access to Office features.

To find out, I tried accessing my test account on an Apple iMac and a PC running Ubuntu with a version of Firefox.

The results were encouraging, everything looking and functioning exactly as it does when you access it from a PC. It would seem that Microsoft has done a pretty good job of ensuring cross-platform support via the browser, with this suite at least.

On both the Mac and Ubuntu I was able to access Outlook and send and receive email, check the calendar, and even edit shared documents stored on SharePoint using the Office Web Apps such as Word.

The one area where this falls down is with Lync, Microsoft's messaging and telephony tool. Unlike the other functions, this is a full-blown software client that must be installed locally, and non-Windows users are out of luck here.

While there is a version of Microsoft's Communicator (the old name for Lync) for Mac OS, Microsoft states on its Office 365 web site: "At this time Communicator for Mac 2011 will not work with Office 365."