I'm sitting in front of my trusty Dell with an old digital Pentium 11 laptop sitting beside me running a CD version of Damn Small Unix (DSL) trying download a copy of open office to try and run on the laptop from a pen drive.
I got to thinking "Whatever happened to manuals?
Anybody know? Back when I first got started in CADD with and Intergraph VAX and Clipper workstations everything had a manual. The hardware manuals for the VAX and Clippers were volumous. So were the original manuals for IGDS, MicroStation and Autocad. Now, if it wasn't for windows help there would be no help at all ( which there isn't).
Now it seems that everything is either available on-line or in .pdf format. What are you suppose to do if your network connection isn't working or you don't have one? How about getting adobe to work properly these days?
Is it to much to ask that every program come with a least ONE Reference Set of Manuals? I mean when you are paying $4000.00 a copy for CADD software is that to much to ask? No one has any trouble printing and including a EULA inside the box -- Do they? If it is a matter of cost pass it along. Since manuals have vanished from the packages I haven't notice any decrease in price to compensate for the omission -- Have you?
Just something to think about the next time you have CADD problem....
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1 comment:
Rande
Totally agree on this one. I am an Autodesk Authorised Instructor for AutoCAD and I get a large number of comments about manuals, normally ranging from "Where's the manuals? All we got was this lousy DVD case with our AutoCAD 2006!" They are all on the CD in PDF format (weird that, considering the Autodesk push to DWF). I tell the students where the manuals are and I get the feedback "It's not like the old days where you could just pull the manual out of the box, is it?" Call me old-fashioned, a Luddite or whatever but nothing can replace the good ol' manual to flick through if you have a problem!
All the best,
Shaun Bryant
STJ2 Consultants
http://stj2.blogspot.com
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