I haven't really been fishing that long to develop one but I don't like bite alarms. I like the peace and quiet of fishing, just switching off from worries about work etc by concentrating on the float and nothing else.
It doesn't help to have this annoying beeping sound every few minutes (which tends to be due to the angler mucking about with something rather than a bite most of the time)
I guess if you are night fishing you need a sound rather than a visual indicator but do you really need that during broad daylight? I think they are used by some people so they can concentrate on their mobile phone calls and cans of Stella (two things already discussed by others...) rather than fishing.
I am not getting at carp anglers or people who have a couple of cans while fishing, nothing wrong with that, but at least turn that beeping thing down.