pesky wrote: can you use them in baby hammocks? I assume not.

No, because the pads need a flat, level surface to rest on in order to register movement.

Thanks ladies ... my work have decided that the baby monitor will be my baby gift (lucky me, since its a pricey item) so its awesome to know the features  

We have an AngelCare Sound & Movement monitor (the kind with pads under the mattress) and have found it to be invaluable for us. Here are my personal pros and cons:

Pros:

• Can be used in bassinette or carrycot with hard base under mattress as well as in cot
• Parent unit is portable with batteries or plugs into wall
• Baby unit uses batteries or plugged into wall
• Baby unit beeps LOUDLY if Baby doesn't breathe for longer than 10 seconds
• Can be used for just movement, sound and movement, or just sound
• Extremely sensitive for both movement and sound
• Cute appearance -- little angel for Parent unit, cloud for Baby unit
• Large range

Cons:

• Price ($250+)
• Thin cord connects movement pads (which go under cot mattress) to Baby unit, so there will be a cord coming out of the bottom of the cot -- puts some parents off, but there is no way Baby can get to it without completely tossing the mattress out of the cot. However, this does mean that the cot needs to go reasonably near a power point.
• Annoying "tick" sound on monitor indicates Baby's in-and-out breathing (can be turned off, though, without turning off the monitor)
• Base needs a flat surface to sit on under mattress
• Can get interference from portable phones (static noise) (all monitors have this problem, though)
• Parent unit can get interference (low buzzing noise) from other things being plugged into the same power point -- like cell phone chargers -- so depending on your house, may need to be plugged into its own power point

All those things aside, we found this monitor to be awesome, and we learned to work with its "quirks". I liked the idea that this monitor was not dependent solely on batteries like the RespiSense one, because I would worry that the batteries would die in the middle of the night and I wouldn't realise it! I also like that this monitor isn't "attached" to the baby but is sensitive enough that it can be under the cot mattress and still detect Baby's breathing. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I'm just looking into baby monitors at the moment.

Id like feedback on the respisense and the baby monitors that come with movement pads, Id like to know the plus and minuses (sp)

Both are pretty pricey and If I had a respisense I would still need to get a monitor for sound so Im thinking that it will end out costing about the same so Im going to go on advice from other mummies.

Thanks