Steveonator,
No, once your tune is loaded you don't have to run the Dashdaq,,till I found a decent way to mount mine(and it does look permanent) I left it on the workbench. Looks like crap with the windshield mount and its a wide open invitation to have your truck broken into mounted that way. The biggest reason I mounted mine is because of all of the different paramenters the gauge setup allows me to monitor that the factory gauges don't....like egt's, etc.