I am one of those people that carry around a bunch of keys and once in while I look at them and cannot recall what locks they are supposed to open. So I fumble on my door a whole lot when locking or unlocking it. I recently visited my friend Annie, and her new apartment has one of those glitzy combination locks. She had gone out for an errand, so she just texted me her password and voila I was in. No fumbling on the door at all. It then hit me; a combination lock might be the cure to my key fetish. But before I could take the plunge and have one installed, I decided to find out if there any benefits of using key locks over combination locks.
Developed from keyless car remote entry systems, combination locks have their advantages. No more agony over lost or misplaced keys, and no need for spare keys to gift every family member or store under the rag on your doorstep. Every burglar worth his salt knows where to get your spare key thanks to those crime shows on TV. With a combination lock, all you need to do is share the proper code of your system to those you’d like to access your home. And there’s the added advantage that some combination locks keep a record of tries to access your home without your consent.
But my old and trusty key lock has some significant advantages too. I score pretty high on the absent-mindedness scale, a trait that does not gel well with the use of combination locks. With my key lock, there are no PIN codes to recall; push the key in and honey, am home! For enhanced safety users of combination, locks are often advised to use random codes, rather than apparent or straightforward codes that are modeled for example after birthday dates. Well, guess what happens once I get that new jazzy combination lock in place? I will lock myself out at first use. Not cool!
Electric power powers digital combination locks, so in the event of some power outage guess who stuck at the porch once more? Yours truly. You are safe though if you have a system that has a battery backup. My lock and key need no juice to do its work, so this one is a no-brainer.
We are also living in the information age where you can find any how-to-do- information online. It is highly possible that a techie burglar will try to hack into your combination lock system. If the burglar is a poor hacker, then depending on your system, the authorities will be there in a jiffy. But if the hacker cum burglar is good, then you will be caught flat-footed. It is true that any lock has its match, but so far my good lock has kept all itchy fingers out of my home, and for that, I give it full points on efficiency.
