[eidian]

Knowing what gear you're in is irrelevant--even when you're lugging or over rev'ing the engine. If you're doing either, shift accordingly; trust me, there's no need to know if you're in 3rd or 4th gear if you have the wheel and engine speed where you need them to be.

I got to test ride a Street Triple 675 a couple of weekends ago and I noticed that it had a gear indicator. My firs thought was, "...that's cool..."; I looked at it a couple of times just to see what gear I was in out of interest because I never rode the bike before.