Owner's Manual Format

cavelamb himself wrote:




Print your own???

So you think I can print a single copy from a CD cheaper than the maker of
the widget can print 100's?

cavelamb himself wrote:

Yeah, Mark, I did.

But a printed manual is a lot handier.

Which is why the manufacture give you one in the first place.

RST Engineering wrote:
Because a lot of our customers are technotards.


So they are going to have trouble printing out a copy on their inkjet
printer.

RST Engineering wrote:
We've been absorbing costs for about five years and just can't afford
to do it any longer. Two choices. Increase price or decrease costs.

For those that require a manual in the airplane, it is cheaper for
you to print it out on your inkjet than for us to use a copy service.

Jim



Jim, and I say this from a publishing background and the owner of laser and
inkjet printers, Bull****.

I can not print off a copy with an ink-jet or even laser printer cheaper
than you can have them printed. If I can you really need to find another
printer because you are getting screwed. And after you find a printer that
isn't bending you over you still need to increase the price do so.

Hi Jim I've built 3 of your kits (intercom + 2 headsets ) and having
the printed instructions on my workbench while building is absoltely
neccessary. I don't think that many people are going to drag their
computer out to the shop so they can reference a CD directly. However
it doesn't really mater if I have to print it myself and it would be a
good opourtunityfor you to add some extra content to the manual. I'm
thinking of some quality colour pictures illistrating the process.
One satisfied customers opinion.

Gig 601XL Builder wrote:

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe wrote:

"Jim Burns" wrote in message
.. .

What sucks is if the manual is required to be carried in the cockpit
by the
avionics certification or STC
(one of the other) Jim(s)


I would think it would be easier to find a place to stash a CD than a
paper manual.


But it would not be vast majority of PICs. Now you could say. "OK, then have
it in both formats. one for those that have a CD reader in the cockpit and a
paper one for those that don't." Then you miss out on any savings gained
from the CD because the per paper manual cost drop significantly as the
volume go up.



Individual unit costs may drop with volumn, but the total cash outlay is

much higher (lots of units).

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrote:
RST Engineering wrote:
We've been absorbing costs for about five years and just can't afford
to do it any longer. Two choices. Increase price or decrease costs.

For those that require a manual in the airplane, it is cheaper for
you to print it out on your inkjet than for us to use a copy service.

Jim

Jim, and I say this from a publishing background and the owner of
laser and inkjet printers, Bull****.

I can not print off a copy with an ink-jet or even laser printer
cheaper than you can have them printed. If I can you really need to
find another printer because you are getting screwed. And after you
find a printer that isn't bending you over you still need to increase
the price do so.

A "copy service" isn't for oneses or twoses, you do a run. To do that
you have to anticipate the future market for your kits. Parts have to be
bulk ordered, circuit boards made. Its alot to ask of 2 people who
already have their @sses on the line and are trying to save you a few
bucks. Plus you have to store all of the above, printed materials
included...

Apparently you have no concept of what postage costs either. That gets
factored in when you add weight and still want to be competitive with
the same widget thats already put together...

And since he's providing the circuit diagrams in .pdf format, that
allows others to simply roll-their-own, with no need to buy anything
from RST at all...

There may be a middle option ... separate the operator's manual from
the installation / maint / troubleshooting / detailed / programming
guide or whatever you want to call it.

If a one page describes how to perform most functions (I have seen
'howto' lists and tree navigation diagrams work well) then THIS
becomes the operators manual. This would keep the spirit of the
requirement.

When I am flying I do not want to have a large manual or navigate a CD
to learn how to perform an operation. It is probable that if I am in
this situation (learning equipment whilst airborne) then I may have
other issues to deal with and I am just increasing my workload.
Scanning a tree diagram (sorry, operations manual) is an acceptable
workload and the sign of well designed equipment. Anything else is
either because (i) I am playing with details of a non-critical
component or activity and should probably stop (ii) I have failed to
be familiar with a critical operation / equipment - this is poor
planning / decision making and I should not be flying this
configuration or (iii) the equipment is not suitably designed for
cockpit operations. Jim - your equipment does not fall into category
(iii).

Construction, learning capabilities, detailed programming,
configuration &c. should be ground operations - PDF / CD / print the
sections that you need should all work well. I use this criteria for
purchasing equipment and in my own construction.

A one pager for operations would be great. I'd hate to see great
products suffer because of the need to have trees fly instead of
letting them continue to produce oxygen and fuel.

Best Regards
Steve

In article ,
"RST Engineering" wrote:

SHUUURE Travis.

Ever run a company? Every put a product out? If so, I'll take advice from
you.

Produce the CD. Produce the printed manual. Produce the website download.
You want to calculate the cost of the stuff you recommend? More than the
cost of producing the print manual to start with.

The company I work for (as a technical writer) has transitioned from
printed docs to docs on CD to online (with a single doc pointing to the
documentation website in the product box) over the past few years.

Why? Because print costs were killing us. On the other hand, a major
product would require about four to six *feet* of shelf space for the
full documentation set. (There were jokes about "buy now, and you get a
free forklift to move your documentation!") If you're even producing
thousands of pages per month of new documentation, ask us how we're
doing it. :}

You've got a pretty nice website, by the way; looks to me as if it
wouldn't be all that much more trouble/expense to add links to your
manuals (in pdf) for customers to download from your support page.

There are ways to get around high documentation print costs, especially
if your shipping volume is low. The same PDF files that you use to send
to the printer could be used to print-on-order for customers who select
hardcopy manual on their order. The printed manual wouldn't ship with
the product, but be shipped directly from the printer to the customer.
Might even beat the product. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that you
only change $10 for printed manuals. Given overhead on top of actual
print costs, you certainly aren't getting rich off offering them. :}

You could do the same for a doc CD, if customers really wanted one,
although bandwidth these days is getting to the point where CDs don't
always make more sense, at least for print-ish documentation. (For a
complete set of plans for a kit plane, they could be verr' nice, even if
the builder doesn't have access to a large-format inkjet
plotter/printer.)

Multimedia, which we've done in the past, is marginally possible for
download, but much more convenient on CD/DVD. And almost certainly more
expensive to produce than you really want to get into.

In article ,
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote:

cavelamb himself wrote:


Print your own???

So you think I can print a single copy from a CD cheaper than the maker of
the widget can print 100's?

Not with an inkjet printer, certainly.

Then again, if the widget maker has any sense at all, he's not going to
be printing 100s or 1,000s at a time. Warehousing and other handling
costs.

Not that he's going to get much of a price break from the printer for
such small quantities.