Everytime we go to the US and rent cars, one of the increasingly indispensable aids you want to use or get is a GPS unit.

HOwever, everytime you get down in the car, you have to take it off as there has been increasing frequency of windows being smashed to get the device which cost a few hundred dollars and which is hard to track, and probably easy to resell.

This report notes that it is not enough to take it off your dashboards.  If you leave an empty plastic cradle suction cup to the windshields, you could still end up getting your windshield smashed.

And even if you take the suction cup off when you get down, it might not be enough.  The plastic cradle leaves a ring of film in the glass, and that alone can signal a thief that there is probably a chance there is a GPS somewhere along the car.  So now, you have to get microfiber cloths to clear the suction-cup rings.

Technology does solve problems, but sometimes also add other problems.  Maybe unless you really need it, maybe a traditional map would be better.

But having use the GPS, the greatest value of using one is not that it will tell you where to go , in my opinion.  Its greatest value is actually after it understands where you want to go, it will inform you if you make the wrong turn.

Which makes me think that maybe the value of consultants, and having good advisors is precisely that — if they understand where you want to go, they can advise you when you go off route…

As prices drop, thefts of GPS units soar - Yahoo! News

Valuable stuff has been swiped from cars forever, but the theft of portable satellite-navigation units is dramatically increasing in many places. Crime analysts blame an alignment of economic and technological factors, while victims lament that the units, which cost several hundred dollars, are rarely recovered or replenished by insurance.

In Maryland’s Montgomery County, outside Washington, D.C., 620 portable navigation devices were filched from cars through Aug. 31, blowing past the 189 taken in all of 2006. In downtown Philadelphia, GPS thefts jumped to 88 in the first eight months of the year from 33 in the same period of 2006.