Ask Slashdot: Why Does Almost Nothing Come With a Proper Printed Manual Anymore?

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: As someone who grew up with 1980s and 1990s computers and electronics and still has whole boxes of lovingly prepared printed computer, peripheral, game and software manuals from that era, I am continually surprised by how just many products ship without a proper printed manual these days. Case in point would be things like Android phones. Android has quite a few not-entirely-obvious functions built into it. And a lot of people aren't even aware they exist. No Android phone I've bought has ever had a printed manual included in its little product box. Not even a small one. Even expensive laptops ranging in price from 2,000 to 5,000 Dollars often come only with a few sheets of printed paper in the box -- warranty card, where to register the device, URL for downloading drivers and so on. Why is this? It can't be environmental concern -- the electronics devices themselves, when thrown away, are a hundred times (if not worse) more harmful to the environment than a little 50 to 100 page recycled paper booklet would be. So where are the manuals? Is it the cost of preparing the manuals? The cost of printing them? Is it a few grams of extra weight added to the product box? Is everyone supposed to look up everything online now, even in places where there is no internet connection? And why can't there be a print manual option -- e.g. pay 3 to 5 Dollars extra, and get a full, printed manual you can study on a couch?

Comments

Re:Nobody reads the manual

[apoc.famine]

You don't seem to be familiar with medical devices. To get FDA approval they generally have to have very limited, very well defined functions. And if you're going to make any substantive changes, you need to go through an approval process all over again.

This leads to less-than-cutting-edge technology which has robust features and documentation. That's not shit that ships out with errors that need to be corrected most of the time. Often one model will be in use for years if not decades, and the manual will be unchanging during that time.

It's a radically different mindset than most consumer goods, which get booted out the door to meet the schedule, and bugs fixed later. Companies that ship medical devices with bugs and incorrect manuals don't tend to last long. There's not an analogy to medical malpractice in the consumer electronics world.