apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

these things are cute and all, but if you've still got a wooden door and frame, you're buying an expensive, pretty toy.

If the battery dies and you are outside, there is a jack beneth them where you can jack a battery pack and open the door.
Works the same way as the card door locks you find in a hotel.

I agreee that it's a expensive pretty toy, but I would love to have it at the frontdoor of my apartament.

We had a non-pretty, analog version of one of these at a house we rented up in Alaska. I have to say that it was pretty nice not to have to keep track of keys. I'm not sure it's worth a few hundred bucks though.

I notice they have these all over Korea in the endless suburbs of cookie-cutter skyscraper apartments. They're good for young children, coming and going throughout the day without the bother of keys. Parents seem more willing to let young children go out by themselves, especially since they have so many different lessons and other neighborhood locations to go to.

The older ones didn't look as nice, and did seem to malfunction sometimes, but they seemed to be quickly replaced with nicer new models. That seems to apply to everything in Korea--a continual process of upgrading.

It's also good for extended families and having guests over, plus the code can be changed at any time (good security feature?)