Originally Posted by WiredGuy

The previous owner of my house was a little nuts, she had motion sensors, window shattering protection, fire and flood warnings and they all link up to a central monitoring station and even if the phone line is cut, it uses the internet as a backup. Its pretty slick and only costs $20/mn for the monitoring. The installation I was told was about $1-2k. Its the physchological effect of getting robbed that's more of an impact than the actual stuff stolen so its worth it for $20/mn. Plus your insurance bill will drop by usually the same amount of the monthly monitoring so its really just a one time investment.
WG