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#11
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
As a 25 year customer with a 442 Intercom, I prefer the printed manual.
It is very hard to clean my notes off the computer screen. The 20 inch CRT monitor takes up all the workspace so I have to hold the project between my knees to solder. ;-)) Having said all that, now that I have a color laser printer and a full version of Acrobat, I can pretty much edit and print what I want, so a CD would fullfil the need if it reduces the costs. |
#12
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
"RST Engineering" wrote in message
.. . So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Jim #3 I have yet to build one of yours, as well as the aircraft to house it, but I have found that the absense of complete printed manuals is a big pain with a lot of newer equipment as well as with a lot of recent software--even though it does keep the price down. Having both is really the only way to go. I have found that it is much easier to "learn" a system, whether hardware or software, when I can just sit down with the complete manual and study it. I have also found that printing manuals at home costs much more for a generally inferior product--there are no oversized fold-out pages and the manual is not as securely bound and/or as well labeled. Never the less, the addition of the CD is also valuable. Pages which are frequently used, or which will be marked up during assembly and testing, can be printed as needed. Also, the contents of the CD can be copied to a hard disk drive on a laptop computer so as to be available at the airport... I hope this helps. Peter |
#13
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
Print!
Bart D. Hull Tempe, Arizona Check http://www.inficad.com/~bdhull/engine.html for my Subaru Engine Conversion Check http://www.inficad.com/~bdhull/fuselage.html for Tango II I'm building. Remove -nospam to reply via email. RST Engineering wrote: So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both print and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Jim |
#14
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
RST Engineering wrote:
So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both print and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Jim You can hold the intercom I ordered a little longer if there is a chance I can get it with the CD. All the instructions in a convenient format for storage, and I can print out just what I need when I go to put it together. CD for me. -- This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)." |
#15
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 23:41:37 -0700, "RST Engineering"
wrote: So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both print and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Jim Jim for usability I prefer something that can be folded, tucked in the blown power supply case that sits beside the soldering iron. you know, wedged between the transformer and the two big capacitors... :-) however for retrieval and storage a cd is best. the cd I can copy on to the hard disk and it sits in the drawer taking up next to no space. let your hair stream back in the breeze and go with your instincts :-) Stealth Pilot down under. |
#16
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
I'd rather have print. Your Intercom manual was good. I've had it for
at least 15 years, I can still read it, and I know someone else will be able to 15 years from now. All my A/C electronics schematics etc are slipped inside your 442 yellow cover. |
#17
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
In article ,
RST Engineering wrote: So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both print and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Comments: 1) Given the kind of printers that _most_ people have at home -- i.e., 'inkjet' (color or B&W) -- you can print the manual MUCH LESS EXPENSIVELY than they can, including decent cover and bindery costs. 2) typical 'home' computer printers are *expensive* to operate -- most users do not recognize _how_expensive_ it is, but it comes out in the 5-10 cents per single-sided page range. 3) A print manual offers several kinds of flexibility that a digital one does not -- or at least not to the same degree. It's much easier to take a print manual to the 'reading room', just to cite one example. Also, it's a lot easier to use a print version at the workbench, vs. the digital one. ` 4) Yes, you can create a 'sort-of equivalent' print version from the CD, but only 'sort of' -- getting the home-produced loose pages 'bound' into booklet form is non-trivial. 5) CDs are great for medium-term 'archival' storage -- you can get an awful lot of stuff in a fairly small amount of physical space. *BUT*, they take a bunch of 'additional stuff' to be useful, while paper manuals are 'stand alone'. 6) The technology _does_ change out from under you; 15 years ago, the standard home computer storage was a 5-1/4" floppy. How many folks could read something on that media, _today_? DVDs are eclipsing CDROM, today. In 10-15 years, I wouldn't be surprised to find that most machines have only 'son-of-DVD/DVD' devices, _without_ support for those 'obsolete', 'low-capacity' things known as CDROMs. 7) it is obviously less expensive for you to produce CDs than print manuals. However, the _total_ cost TO THE CUSTOMER is less for a print copy if you do the printing. And he gets a better grade of product -- e.g., a bound booklet, vs pile of loose pages. _I_ would mutter, gripe, and bitch&moan, if manuals were offered *only* on CD. I would be willing to _pay_extra_, to get the CD, *in*addition*to* the printed manual. I would prefer to have it as an 'option', rather than always bundled. However if that is not viable, then I'd settle for 'both, always'. I probably don't need to mention it, but be sure that any technical drawings are done as 'line art' (i.e. 'vector' graphics), and not embedded bit-map images (e.g. .GIF, .JPG, etc.). People -will- want to zoom in on those drawings to a 'ridiculous' degree, and bit-maps go 'fuzzy' really quickly. |
#18
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Avionics Build It Yourself Manuals
In article ,
"RST Engineering" wrote: So for 35 years now we've been putting out our kits with two printed manuals per kit ... a "operations and maintenance" and a "construction and assembly" manual. Each of which costs us about $2 a manual. Not a big deal. I've got a wild hair that we can put out a digital CDROM set of manuals that will give COLOR pictures, video "how to", and a lot of other stuff on the CDROM. The other person in the company says that you all want print manuals. Please vote: 1. I want a print (paper) set of manuals with my kit. 2. I want a CDROM with my kit that I can print out myself. 3. I want you to increase the cost of the kit by $5 and include both print and CDROM with every kit. Please, no other permutations. Print or CDROM. No other choices. Jim I vote for #1, printed manual. I call that "appropriate technology for the situation." Running back and forth from my computer to my workshop (construction) or from my computer to my airplane (operations) would be a PIA of gargantuan proportions. Maybe when notebook computers are the size of a thin magazine and cost $35, CD would be acceptable. Until then, NFW. I tell you what, I'll give you an extra $5 to promise never to put out a CD manual. |
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