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We use PDF to deliver all sorts of information to customers, and, for the
most part, it works well. We rely on it to provide extra copies of manuals
to customers who paid for only one set and to provide the ability to do a
complete word search on a document(s). We DON'T rely on it to fulfill OUR
obligations to the customer. When we do training, the cost of materials is
included in the total cost of training, or of the product.
Sometimes we'll provide PDF files to the trainers INTERNALLY, who can then
produce the documents. This means that we have the ability to resolve any
issues in-house before training commences. But we don't ask customers to do
this for several reasons: (1) we can't guarantee success (something you've
already come across); (2) customers sometimes fudge the truth when asked if
everything is OK because they're busy or they think everything is fine or
they don't want to be bothered; (3) we can't guarantee that the print
quality will be good enough. All of this means that you can't rely on the
customer to set up and prepare your training materials for you.
I wouldn't be surprised if the customer wasn't too happy with the set up
either--I'd be thinking none too highly of a company that asked me to do
extra work for a training session I wasn't supposed to run.
Problems that the customer may have encountered:
* Used a version of Reader that is less recent than the version needed.
Even though you included the Reader on the CD-ROM, someone may have had an
old copy and decided not to reinstall.
* Printer doesn't have enough memory to print the files. This is
especially a problem with graphics-intensive PDFs. Our printer can't print
one of the large PDF files we create and it has 12 Mbs of RAM. Most
printers only have 1-2 Mb.
* Depending on the availability of fonts and how you saved the PDFs, font
substitution can occur, making your documents fairly unattractive. This is
something that you may not be able to see when you print because you have
all of the necessary fonts.
All in all, it's much safer and easier to use hard copies for training.
