Well earlier this morning I was talking with the vette tech (Shane) who works on my car at Champion Chevrolet and we got to talking about this tuning stuff. He highly recommended the Diablo Predator and the more I thought about it the more I think I am better off with something like that. The PC based tuners are more powerful and comprehensive, but they also allow you to get yourself into hot water as well. Quite honestly, I just don't have the knowledge or skill level to put one of them to optimum use anyway, and I don't think it would be a good idea to try a whole lot of shoot in the dark experimentation.
I'm not really inclined to get a dyno tune at the moment, I guess mostly because I'm not interested in WOT performance as much as I am seat of the pants low and mid range performance.
Now the latest revision of the Predator does not VIN lock the unit to your car. Once you put the regular stock tune back in your vehicle, it can be used on ANY vehicle within it's design range. It is ONLY VIN locked when you download the optional tunes into your vehicle. VIN locking was one of the major sticking points I had with buying one, which now appears to be resolved. And all of the other sideline functions will work on those other vehicles regardless. Shane mentioned that he found a place on the web selling them for $319 with a 30 day money back guarantee AND free shipping, so what the heck. I just ordered one. I also ordered the optional PC interface as well.
So we'll see. Of course, if I use it on my wife's Silverado and give at a performance tune and she LIKES it, she may confiscate it from me.
If anyone is interested in checking these out, here's where I am getting mine from ->
http://www.concoursdirect.com/99gmgasveprp.html