All good points, and I appreciate your perspective, thank you for replying. For me, I think the greatest benefit is what you mentioned about cutting short the time the intruder has in the home. If I am in a deep sleep, and someone breaks into my home, I would at least like to be awoken with enough time to arm myself (of course hoping that the siren was enough to scare off the intruder). If I'm not home, hopefully this might deter the intruder from getting far enough into the home to get at our valuables. This benefit can also be achieved with a couple dollars worth of the manual door sirens they sell at the hardware store, so I definitely see your point there about the monitoring fees and contracts.