A few years ago I joined the 20th century and stopped scraping my windscreen on frosty, icy mornings. I was one of the millions who had all manner of scratchy, scrapy and ultimately partly-broken devices to clear my windscreen and every time I had to do it I would curse.
A friend introduced me to winter washer fluid, though, and I've never looked back. The brand I use is Rain-X and their winter formulation is bright orange. I put it in my washer bottle about November and keep using the same stuff until around April. Once it's in your entire washer system - pump, bottle, nozzles and hoses - you ought to be able to spray your windshield on an icy morning and have the ice begin to break up and melt without having to go near it with a scraper.
There's a couple of caveats though - the biggest of which is this : make sure your wiper blades aren't stuck to your windscreen before you get in. Burned out wiper motors or rubber blades torn from the metal supports is not something you want to be dealing with on a cold morning.
The other caveat is that you might still need an ice scraper for the side windows if you're not patient. If you're willing to wait a few minutes for the heater to blow warm air on the side windows though.....
Of course all this advice is pointless if you have remote start where you can sit cozy inside and remote-start your vehicle while having breakfast and then get in when it's all warm and defrosted. But I'm not that advanced (or rich) so I make do with the old manual methods :)
