@shepherd
Sorry but if you are thinking of a tracking device to drop your indurance premium then you are flogging a pretty dead horse. They are invaluable for helping avoid theft and for getting the vehicle back afterwards, however, in most cases they do not affect the premium and will often actually affect an increase in premium if you tell the insurance company you have one.
The only way around this, is to tell the insurance company that you have an after market anti theft system. Do not mention GPS. They may, in some cases, take that into consideration.
The explanation given to me went as follows: If your vehicle is stolen, and is beyond economical repair, the insurance company will write it off. However, you are not abliged to accept their offer and you may wish to have the vehicle repaired irrespective of cost. This is expensive for the insurance company and so once a vehicle is stolen, the insurer prefers that you do not recover it. That's straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, and in my opinion is feckin mental!
The black box systems that ADS110 is discussing is a different animal entirely. It works by using GPS to guage your driving skills... it measures braking and acceleration rates, and reports any occurrences of speeding. It is not a device that provides location information on the vehicle on an ongoing basis.
Obviously I prefer small companies with bespoke systems. (Especially since I are one!). I think they are valuable because if you get a decent one they will work with you to make sure that the system you pay for is the system that works best for you. Altering the software is something that we have done for a few LZ members, in fact we are working on a modification to the system at the moment for a member who would like a variation on the current low voltage warning.
I honestly believe that with the thousands of pounds people spend on their vehicles, it is silly to scrimp on a couple of hundred quid's worth of tracking device... in fact sometimes ours are as low as £100 when we get trade ins.
Just my two pen'orth!