Best remote-start distance on cheap alarm?

[G]

I'm looking to get a cheap remote start alarm for my new commuter.
Ideally I want to be able to start it from my office, which is three floors up and across a bit from where I park it.

Any recommendations for ones that specifically work well over bigger distances?

Ideally, would like a 'pager' one which would also work over these distances, but hopefully the car park is actually fairly secure.

[edit]This one looks interesting. Anyone used a similar alarm? I'm a bit sceptical about 5km range, but 100m would be do me fine I reckon.[/edit]

[Ingah]

Yes, i own and use that one. I think mine said "patriot" instead of "voyager" but it's otherwise exactly the same.

Range seems naff even in direct line of sight and worse if there's walls in the way (i got maybe 40 metres from behind the bike before it lost signal) - however my antennae/receiver is placed under my seat (i didn't fit it myself), and my CB500 is seemingly made almost wholly of heavy chunky metals (i.e. RangeKillers), unlike the plastic bikes everyone else has. The retailer seems to reckon i should place this receiver under the side panel of the bike for better range. I daresay he is right.

Otherwise it's a bloody excellent system and everything works as well as advertised (anti-hijack (remote engine kill and disable) is a particularly nice touch).

Power drain is 8mA for alarm only and 22mA (tested figures) for the microwave system according to the retailer i bought from (probably means 30mA for both). Have heard elsewhere that it provides power to the microwave system even when you've disabled it via the fob though (haven't investigated this for myself, but it's abit pants if you have to actually unplug it to save the drain) - don't get me wrong though, it actually does disable the detection.

2 features you can't turn off are the prime annoyances:
1) Auto-arm; within about 30 seconds of you killing the engine (i use a chain, this takes time and i don't want the bike arming so fast that it goes off). Workaround is to use killswitch to kill engine then fit the chain, then remove key (downside being i could forget to take the key out one day). Fortunately this feature stopped working quickly on my bike
2) False disalarm; if you disarm the alarm and don't start the ignition within about 30 seconds (e.g. want to work on the bike), the alarm will re-arm itself and you have no way to cancel this. Combined with the auto-arm feature this can be very annoying and means you have to have your ignition on to do anything. The retailer said that what he does, is unplug the system to do work.

I'm making it all sound very negative so i should say that that is my full list of niggles and the product is excellent value for money and i would actually highly recommend it if you can put up with a few nuances. I have been told (as an example) the new £300+ datatool system won't even let you stop it by any means unless you put it in a mode, where it beeps annoyingly regularly to "warn" you! So it could be worse.

Sometimes i wish i'd gone for the simpler version without all the fancy things. But then, i have had the pleasure of watching scrotums being scared away by the bike that seemed to "know" they were near. And of scaring innocent people by having my engine remote start as they walk by - such confusion
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-- Ingah

[G]

Cheers for the thoughts .

I've had fun with remote-start on previous bikes scaring work-people walking past .

Have had fun with beeping-datatools; not great when you have to have it set like that at a bike rally!

How well does the paging system work, if you've tested it? (I presume the range is going to be limiting it's usefulness.)

My bike's got pretty thin-looking plastic panels, so hopefully should be a bit better.

Anyone compare one of these too other cheap alarms? Is the range noticeably better?

[Ingah]

[calyx]

I have a similar one which is "spy5000m".
It's been a year since I fitted the alarm and it still does the job perfectly.
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Boris - London