They have some very nice complete systems with wireless cameras that are motion detection cameras and also night vision. Those are the best kind of cameras systems and they can be used with your computer if needed and the images can be sent to any computer on the internet so you can watch what is going on from any location...as long as you have high speed internet. I have one and put one camera down at my entrance to my property to view anyone who might stop at my gate, and it's over 300 feet from the base unit and reception works great. The other cameras I move around my house or porch as needed and they work fine. I also have a seperate sound alarm to alert me when anyone is at my front gate. Good Luck Kt

I agree with you, funnygirl. When I posted here recently about an attempted break-in at our house, numerous posters had the same advice: Get a dog! We already have cats, and consider them our "children". We aren't in the market for any more "kids", so getting a dog for protection or companionship wasn't an option that was even on the table for us. I will admit, however, that we have posted BEWARE OF DOG signs in a couple of prominent places. Would-be crooks have no idea if "Rover" is in the house and about to storm through a doggy door, or around the back or side, out of view but just waiting to pounce. ;-) We have also locked our back gate - something we hadn't thought was necessary before. And we've just ordered security doors - decorative iron and tempered glass - to go in front of our regular passage doors. If anyone wants to kick in a door, they have to get past the security door first, and in all likelihood, they won't waste their time. We considered putting security bars on our windows, but have nixed that idea, based upon conversations with local law enforcement. They maintain that it's usually the door that's kicked in, but if a window is used to gain access, the thief wants to go out the door with the loot - not back out the window. Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for a criminal to get in and out quickly. We have used ADT to monitor our security system for 9 years and have always been very satisfied with their service.

We, too, have had an ADT system for about 17 of the 20 years we've lived here. It is monitored 24/7, but not by the police -- it's monitored by the ADT folks. I don't know how much it costs per month because Hubs pays that bill, but I know it's not bad. (Of course, peace of mind and security are worth any price they'd charge.) As for keeping windows open -- the way that a window is monitored is that there is a contact point on the inside of the frame, and a corresponding contact point on the part of the window that moves. When the two points are in contact with each other, everything is fine. When they lose contact with each other, it sets off the alarm. So, if you want to have a window open, the alarm installer can put the inside-the-frame contact point high enough to allow the window to be open enough to allow air/breezes in, but not high enough that someone could crawl through the space and into your home. Motion detectors can also be set so that the beam is low enough to catch a human going, for example, up the stairs, but high enough that your animals can roam through the house without being caught by the motion detector's beam. As Lynn just mentioned, if for some reason our alarm goes off (say, for example, Hubs opens the door from the breakfast nook to the back deck, but forgets to turn off the alarm), and we enter the proper code to turn off the alarm, all is well. If the wrong code is entered, ADT will immediately call us and ask for a preestablished code word. If we say the right word, all is well. If not, the police/sheriff are notified. If we don't answer the home phone, ADT will call our cell phones. We have two control pads for the system -- one is near the front door, and the other is upstairs in the master bedroom. When you enter the house when the alarm is on, you have a preset amount of time to enter the code to turn it off. We have plenty of time to come into the house from the garage and get to the keypad by the front door. We wanted the extra keypad in the master bedroom in case, Heaven forbid, we thought someone was attempting to break into the house during the night. We don't want to have to go downstairs to enter panic codes into the system. We live in an unincorporated area of Sacramento County, so in our case, the Sheriff's Office would be notified. And, we have to pay $75 to them every other year for an "alarm permit."

When I lived in CA, what Elmer describes was quite common - signs but no security system. The house we rented had a private security SERVICE contract - it was a number one called if someone was breaking into the house and you were there. We did pay for this as at that time (early 1980's) the average response time from LAPD was 25 minutes and with the security service, it was 3 minutes. While it was a VERY affluent area (we rented!), there were regular break-ins and it was unsafe to ever walk on the sidewalks after dark - sometimes even earlier. Personal muggins were quite common - this in a neighborhood where the house prices started at about 1.5 million and went UP from there very quickly. BTW - ADT has never offered me additional signs and stickers since I got the system about 18 years ago.