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What Ever Happened to Well Documented User Manuals
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TERRA Operative:

--- Quote from: Berni on September 29, 2023, 08:06:37 am ---Last week i was specing out my new PC and it was infuriating how deep i had to dig on some manufacturers public websites to find the specs for a product. They all hit you in the face with fancy product photos, marketing wank, animations... etc only when you scroll all the way trough that you find a dropdown window that you have to click to expand in order to actually see the specs. WHY?!  |O  I don't care how a SSD or motherboard looks from all sort of artistic animated angles. I wanna know how fast it is and if it works with what i want to plug it into.

--- End quote ---

I just bought an RTX4070 Ti GPU and I wanted to know the power draw of the card itself to make sure it would be ok in my eGPU setup without upgrading the PSU.
There was NO information on the total wattage on the manufacturers website beyond 'Recommend a 550W PSU' in regards to the power required by an entire average gaming PC. I had to find the numbers as measured by a review website...


--- Quote from: PapierzToaletowy on September 29, 2023, 10:22:52 am ---"No user serviceable parts inside" happened.

1980s car made in socialist economy had a 100-page booklet (user manual) with important parts list, electrical wiring diagrams and basic mechanical maintenance instructions. Full service manual (with detailed specs, drawings, dimmensions, mechanical tolerances etc.) was also available for purchase, even to regular people. It was expected that user may have to service his car in his home workshop.

Late 2010s car came with a 300-page book with maybe 5 pages of valuable information (tire pressure, lug nut torque, oil type etc.) and the rest is bullshit like: "contact your dealer" or "don't stick your male appendage into a 12V lighter socket". Any service manuals are either unofficial (think Haynes books) or under NDA and have to be pirated (if you're lucky to find one)  :palm: Same thing for bicycles. Lots of tl;dr that you have to be very careful when doing 15 km/h on a dirt road and one page with important torque specs and recommendation to leave any servicing for professional bicycle workshop.

Of course, there's not much point comparing 1980s car to todays complex electro-mechanical marvels, but still...

If I had to guess, I'd say it's possible that if manufacturer provided service instructions, then he could be held liable for botched DIY repairs where user ends up hurting himself. So everything is dumbed-down and if user damages the device or hurts himself, it's his own fault.

--- End quote ---

I had to pay 30,000yen (about US$250 at the time) to get the workshop manuals and full schematics on the workshop CD from Toyota for my 2019 model car.
(If anyone has a 2019 model facelift Third-gen 80-series Toyota Noah minivan, I can provide all schematics etc in pdf form, a few even translated. :D )
The provided user manual was mostly the usual 'this is how you turn on the headlights and how to open a window, and how to call for assistance if you have a flat tyre' bullshit. They don't even have a recommended service schedule by kilometers anymore, its all by time (What if I only do 1000km every 6 months going to the shops on the weekend, or I do 50,000km in the same time as a traveling salesman?). I had to pry the real info from the mechanics which turned out to be the usual 10,000km or 20,000km if using premium oil etc.... It's all getting dumbed down to drooling mouth-breathing levels.


Although, a portion of the problem regarding test equipment is the highly integrated nature of things with SMD this, BGA that, firmware everywhere with custom chips sprinkled around that make repair a much harder thing to do than the much simpler SMD and through-hole construction of the early 90's and earlier.


I did some time in documentation (for domestic airconditioners and HEMS equipment). There were more than a few products that I overhauled the manuals for, and poured in much more detailed information than was originally included.
I'm pretty sure that there is a place for me in Documentation Valhalla for my modest efforts. :-DD
BeBuLamar:
It's kind of value added thing. How much value do most customers put on a good manual? Very little as few read them and thus manufacturers don't bother with the manual any more. Not so much the cost of printing or to save paper. Even online manuals now are very bad. They don't spend money on writing good manuals any more.
AG6QR:
The first computer printer I purchased, in approximately 1988, was an Epson LX-80, a basic 9-pin impact dot matrix printer. It came with a 158-page manual which included all of the control codes to print both text and graphics in various ways, along with lots of example programs (in BASIC, of course, since that was the language that most computers used with this printer would have had built-in).  The technical information contained in that manual would have been all the information needed to write a driver for that printer to work with any software package.

I found the manual on-line today.  https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/lx80__/lx80__u1.pdf   It is a beautiful example of manuals of the day. Packed with technical information, clearly written in very understandable English.

What happened?  I suspect it was something along the lines of:

We did a survey and found that most of our customers aren't reading the manuals.  It costs a lot to produce those manuals. In the interest of fairness to all customers, we decided to write our manuals so that the people who read them don't gain an unfair advantage over the ones who toss them in the trash immediately.
johnk0gcj@gmail.com:

I realize that this sounds radical, but do you suppose money has anything to do with this?

Neilm:
User guides are done by a publicity department that probably don't know what function the unit does anyway, the writer has probably never used one and just got a description of the various controls. The safety warnings are to CYA for the company - I mean draw attention to known hazards and providing the suitable mitigations to these hazards.

I am an engineer and I have written service manuals, but I got the first one I wrote sent back as it was too detailed and potentially revealed company IPO

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