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Subject:RE: PC World RTFM From:"Goldstein, Dan" <DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:55:38 -0500
I can't speak for the Best Buy types, but in commercial niche software,
printed manuals are often used as a sales tool. This is especially true when
a company is purchasing software for a large number of users with varying
skill levels: When a vendor brings high-quality, printed manuals to a sales
call, it can make all the difference. I've seen it happen.
Dan Goldstein
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Al Geist
> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 12:45 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: PC World RTFM
>
> Eric is absolutely correct. I once ran a computer
> retail/service center and I can tell you that most of our
> problems directly related to the computer industry's focus on
> the bottom line. Putting all the manuals on a disk is great
> for that bottom line, but useless if you can't boot up the
> computer. Unfortunately, the decisions to move away from
> printed manuals is not done by the technical writer and is
> partly the customers fault. Customers want the most power
> for the least money, so they buy the cheapest system. In
> that sense, you get what you pay for and that means on line
> manuals which are useless if the system won't boot and in
> effective web help as the NVidia example.
>
> Al
>
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