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A mans home is his castle, as the saying goes. But homes today dont normally feature ramparts, drawbridges, moats and six-foot thick stone walls to keep out unwanted visitors. Today, a house alarm, and preferably a managed home security system, is needed to ensure your homes security. Not only does installing a home security system improve the safety of your family and possessions, but it can also decrease your home insurance costs. The Top Ten House Alarm and Home Security Devices list highlights ten devices and features of home security systems that can make your house a safer place.

The Top Ten

10. Talking Devices help you to understand the status of your home and monitoring as well as program the system. Some security systems feature talking master control panels, key pads or remotes. The talking feature may not result in great conversation, but it will help you understand your system a little better.

9. Some home alarm systems include extras like Key Fobs and Remotes to control the system at a distance. Somewhat similar to a cars key fob, home security key fobs include buttons to activate and deactivate the house alarm system. Some even include a panic button that activates the house alarm and alerts the proper authorities in the event of an emergency. remote controls are similar and often larger. The features of remotes vary greatly and can include a full key pad, a talking feature and a panic button as well.

8. Yard Signs and House or Window Decals advertise your homes protection. The Greenwich Study of Residential Security found that homes without alarms were 2.7 to 3.5 times more likely to be burglarized, and that the most effective deterrent was the alarm monitoring companys yard sign (SIA Research Update, Security Industry Association, October 2001). Some choose to post the signs to deter possible break-ins without actually installing a home alarm system. While this effort will lower the odds of an attempted burglary, a yard sign alone cannot fully protect your home.

7. A Back-Up Power supply is important in maintaining home security even during a power outage, when the risk of break-ins and looting is increased. Your home alarm should be effective even when your power is not. The easiest to maintain back-up power supplies use standard size batteries. Look for a model that uses rechargeable batteries to lower your maintenance costs.

6. Smoke Detectors add another layer of protection to your home, especially when they are integrated into the home alarm system. Not only do smoke detectors indicate a fire and give you time to escape safely, but when included in a home security package, they automatically notify the managing company and the fire department. Some systems even integrate the power supply to the smoke detectors. That means you dont have to change the batteries ever!

5. Wireless Systems protect your home without adding extra cords to trip over or extensive installation of in-wall cords. In wireless house alarm systems, each sensor or keypad communicates with the master control panel via radio frequencies or existing wiring in your home. A burglar will never be able to disarm the system by snipping the wires. This ensures the system is fully integrated and monitoring all parts of your home without using up your outlets or creating an obstacle course of wires for you.

4. Extra Key Pads are also important. Exterior mounted key pads can provide secure keyless entry to your family. Some systems also offer remote control key pads which are lightweight and portable. A home alarm system that features a security code with a key pad increases the security of your home. A monitored system can also lock down entry after several repeated, failed attempts at entry which indicate a possible break-in attempt.

3. Key pads may not always be enough to keep burglars out. Sensors on windows and Doors reduce the risk of a burglar entering undetected and are a key part of a home alarm system. Motion Detectors within the home also increase the level of security. The most sophisticated motion detectors include a feature to ignore pets movement to avoid constantly setting the alarm off inadvertently.

2. Installation, monitoring, and Repair Services increase not only the level of safety but the convenience of keeping your home safe. A house alarm alone cannot notify the police or fire department in the event of an emergency. The most complete systems include buttons to notify police departments, fire departments and medical help instantly. Another advantage offered by the best monitoring companies is live customer support and full service installation and repair of the system by employees who have been background checked, licensed and drug tested to ensure your safety. Finally, some companies even offer relocation services to keep you secure even when you move.

1. The classic Master Control Panel is vital to any home alarm system. The central hub of the system, the control panel is usually wall-mounted in an easily accessible place. The panel receives information from all other sensors and key pads, computes it, and transmits relevant information to the monitoring company. If you choose to arm the system from the panel when you leave the house, the master control panel also receives the disarm code when you return home. Some can even be disarmed by telephone!

Of course, this list is not comprehensive, and the needs of every home and homeowner are different. For more tips on choosing the right home alarm system and features to protect your house, I recommend visiting alarmoneinc.com.

About the Author: Boyd Norwood is a web content specialist for 10x Marketing. For more information on house alarm and home security systems, please visit alarmoneinc.com.

So you want to be a card Shark? Who wouldn't when it is so easy and convenient to play this very popular slot machine and cheap too it is only a penny to play. So what are you waiting for? Gather those pennies and play card shark.

card shark is a five reel slot machine with multiple paylines and you choose how many lines you want to play max is 9 and you can play up to 45 coins. It is up to you, but the more lines you play the better your odds are of winning at card shark. Make your bet and spin, it's that easy.

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It is called card shark because if you get 3 card shark icons anywhere and you get the chance to play card shark, a high low card game that will pop up on your screen. When you get it right you win the total amount that was wagered on the spin. There are so many ways to win with card shark no wonder it is one of the most popular slot games out there.

Start playing the online version of card shark and you can start swimming with the big fishes. After all card shark makes winning seem easy.

Hard Drives: ATA versus SATA

The performance of computer systems has been steadily increasing as faster processors, memory, and video cards are continuously being developed. The one key component that is often neglected when looking at improving the performance of a computer system is the hard drive. Hard drive manufacturers have been constantly evolving the basic hard drive used in modern computer systems for the last 25 years, and the last few years have seen some exciting developments from faster spindle speeds, larger caches, better reliability, and increased data transmission speeds.

The drive type used most in consumer grade computers is the hearty ATA type drive (commonly called an IDE drive). The ATA standard dates back to 1986 and is based on a 16-bit parallel interface has undergone many evolutions since its introduction to increase the speed and size of the drives that it can support. The latest standard is ATA-7 (first introduced in 2001 by the T13 Technical Committee (the group responsible for the ATA standard)) which supports data transfer rates up to 133MB/sec. This is expected to be the last update for the parallel ATA standard.

As long ago as 2000 it was seen that the parallel ATA standard was maxing out its limitations as to what it could handle. With data rates hitting the 133MB/sec mark on a parallel cable, you are inviting all sorts of problems because of signal timing, EMI (electromagnetic interference) and other data integrity issues; thus industry leaders got together and came up with a new standard known as serial ATA (SATA). SATA has only been around a few years, but is destined to become the standard due to several benefits to be addressed in this Tech Tip.

The two technologies that we will be looking at are: ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) a 16-bit parallel interface used for controlling computer drives. Introduced in 1986, it has undergone many evolutions in the last 18+ years, with the latest version being called ATA-7. Wherever an item is referred to as being an ATA device, it is commonly a Parallel ATA device. ATA devices are also commonly called IDE, EIDE, Ultra-ATA, Ultra-DMA, ATAPI, PATA, etc. (each of these acronyms actually do refer to very specific items, but are commonly interchanged) SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) a 1-bit serial evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface.

basic Features & Connections

SATA drives are easy to distinguish from their ATA cousins by the different data and power connections found on the back of the drives. A side-by-side comparison of the two interfaces can be seen in this PDF from Maxtor, and the following covers many of the differences

Standard ATA drives, such as this 200GB Western Digital model, have somewhat bulky, two inch wide ribbon cable with 40-pin data connections and receive the 5V necessary to power them from the familiar 4-pin connection. The basic data cables for these drives have looked the same for years. A change was made with the introduction of the ATA-5 standard to better improve the signal quality by making an 80 wire cable used on the 40-pin connector (these are commonly called 40-pin/80-wire cables). To improve airflow within the computer system some manufacturers resorted to literally folding over the ribbon cable and taping it into that position. Another recent physical change also came with the advent of rounded cables. The performance of the rounded cables is equal to that of the flat ribbon, but many prefer the improved system air flow afforded, ease of wire management, and cooler appearance that come with them.

SATA drives, such as this 120GB Western Digital model, have a half inch wide, 7 blade and beam data connection, which results in a much thinner and easier to manage data cable. These cables take the convenience of the ATA rounded cables to the next level by being even narrower, more flexible and capable of being longer without fear of data loss. SATA cables have a maximum length of 1 meter (39.37 inches), which is much greater than the recommended 18 inch cable for ATA drives. The reduced footprint of SATA data connections frees up space on motherboards, potentially allowing for more convenient layouts and room for more onboard features!

A 15-pin power connection delivers the 250mV of necessary power to SATA drives. 15-pins for a SATA device sounds like it would require a much larger power cable than a 4-pin ATA device, but in reality the two power connectors are just about the same height. For the time being, many SATA drives are also coming with a legacy 4-pin power connector for convenience.

Many modern motherboards, such as this Chaintech motherboard, come with SATA drive connections onboard (many also including the ATA connectors as well for legacy drive compatibility), and new power supplies, such as this Ultra X-Connect, generally feature a few of the necessary 15-pin power connections, making it easy to use these drives on new systems. Older systems can easily be upgraded to support SATA drives by use of adapters, such as this pci slot SATA controller and this 4-pin to 15-pin SATA power adapter.

Optical drives are also becoming more readily available with SATA connections. Drives such as the Plextor PX-712SA take advantage of the new interface, although the performance will not be any greater than a comparable optical drive with an ATA connection.

performance

In addition to being more convenient to install and drawing less power, SATA drives have performance benefits that really set them apart from ATA drives.

The most interesting performance feature of SATA is the maximum bandwidth possible. As we have noted, the evolution of ATA drives has seen the data transfer rate reach its maximum at 133 MB/second, where the current SATA standard provides data transfers of up to 150 MB/second. The overall performance increase of SATA over ATA can currently be expected to be up to 5% (according to Seagate), but improvements in SATA technology will surely improve on that.

The future of SATA holds great things for those wanting even more speed, as drives with 300 MB/second transfer rates (SATA II) will be readily available in 2005, and by 2008 speeds of up to 600 MB/second can be expected. Those speeds are incredible, and are hard to imagine at this point.

Another performance benefit found on SATA drives is their built-in hot-swap capabilities. SATA drives can be brought on and offline without shutting down the computer system, providing a serious benefit to those who cant afford downtime, or who want to move drives in and out of operation quickly. The higher number of wires in the power connection is partially explained by this, as six of the fifteen wires are dedicated to allowing the hot-swap feature.

Price

Comparing ATA drives to SATA drives can be tricky given all of the variables, but in general it is the case that SATA drives will still cost just a bit more than a comparable ATA drive. The gap is closing rapidly though, and as SATA drives gain in popularity and availability a distinct shift in prices can be expected. Considering the benefits of SATA over ATA, the potential difference of a few dollars can easily be justified when considering an upgrade. Computer Geeks currently has a limited selection of SATA drives, but several technical sites, such as The Tech Zone and The Tech Lounge, offer real time price guides to see how comparable drives stack up.

Final Words

The current SATA standard provides significant benefits over ATA in terms of convenience, power consumption and, most importantly, performance. The main thing ATA has going for it right now is history, as it has been the standard for so long that it will not likely disappear any time soon. The future of SATA will be even more interesting as speed increases will help hard drive development keep pace with other key system components.

Jason Kohrs Computer Geeks tech tips and computer advice