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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?
Why is this even a question. When a company does not include something it's because they are trying to save money. Even offering a servi e to print the manual for you means they will have to spend money on things to do that.
Just get a tablet and load all your manual/pdfs on that.
Seriously Slashdot, do you let these posts through because you have nothing better to do?
Back in my days, the full electronic schematic for a radio was attached to the inside of the removable back cover.
I prefer PDFs that I file when I can find them easily. A second advantage is that most manuals have multiple languages. I can split the PDF and make one that has only the pages I want.
I have many fond memories of installing WordPerfect 5.1 on my office computer and taking the manual home to study on my own time. The manual explained almost everything you could do at that time in WordPerfect, in plain English, step by step, and with short examples. Thanks to the manual I learned how to do many things that I never actually had to myself and was often called upon by others in the office to help them. Several of us were of the same mind and studied the manual. Oh, the amazing things that got done there because several of us knew how to do extra things. I believe that manual helped to make WordPerfect the word processor of choice at that time. What a cynical, stoopid, useless time we live in now.