Jim Elbrecht wrote:
I just priced the windows for the last room in my 100 yr old house.

One of the options the salesman offered was tempered glass. My
first instinct was 'sure, why not?' -- but the more I think about it,
I have trouble justifying the extra $2-300 for 3 windows.

So is there something else I'm missing that makes tempered a
worthwhile investment?

One day, about 40 years ago, the police came and told everybody in the
kuldesak to move their cars out of the street. A few minutes later, a
medivac helicoptor landed there and took the little girl who lived in
the house farthest to the left to the hospital. She had run through
sliding door made of untempered glass, and her torso was pierced by a
very large shard. She died at the hospital that day. The next day,
my father put metal bracing over all our sliding glass doors but had
everything replaced with tempered glass.

She lived in the house farthest to the left:

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/9889/housesa.jpg