User Manuals

[Graham Threader]

At Gradav we believe that manuals are good. We supply paper copies with all items of hire equipment where we feel they are of value (all moving lights, LEDs, desks etc). Sadly many of these manuals don't get returned. Have they been kept for future reference, or lost?

 

On our website we offer PDF downloads for as many items in our rental stock as we can. For example we have manuals for MAC700 wash & profiles available. For other items where manuals/guides aren't available we often write our own eg Pyro, PAT Testing, Sennheiser 1000 & 3000 series.

 

We advise customers to keep PDF copies with them, for it can be the case that the paper copy is in a case under a pile of cases, and the laptop tends to be more available than that!

[mac.calder]

It may be worth thinking about a "Literature Security Deposit" - refund on return. Maybe $2 per manual sent out or something (to cover printing costs). I have seen it before on hire invoices I have signed for - either that, or put in the hire contract that literature not returned will result in a $2 per manual charge.

[gareth]

At Gradav we believe that manuals are good. We supply paper copies with all items of hire equipment where we feel they are of value (all moving lights, LEDs, desks etc). Sadly many of these manuals don't get returned. Have they been kept for future reference, or lost?

Just do what some of the other hire companies do - bind the paper copies into a cover with the words "This manual is the property of xxxxxx - a charge of £xx will be made if it is not returned". I suppose you'd also need to insert a 'non-return of manuals' clause into your T&Cs to make sure it was enforceable.

[Graham Threader]

We do label the manuals to show that charges will be made for non-return. And we do charge for missing manuals.

 

My point really was the lack of care/interest shown by many with regard to manuals. We know from posts here, and elsewhere, that there are some technicians who just cannot be bothered to read manuals anyway. They would rather post a question and avoid the research. Just how serious are they if they avoid the study that would improve their knowledge & abilities?

 

Being professional involves more than just getting paid. After all, the Wild,Wild West had professional cowboys.

[skdean]

We also have PDF copies of manuals on our website of most of the gear in our hire department. This is much appreciated by our clients.

[3guk]

I think it would be great if there was a website that had almost every manual of every piece of equipment of each department (sound, lights, AV etc) although that would be a very difficult task to construct.

 

On paper the idea is great, but in practise the idea is a nightmare, as peter pointed out we struggled to get all manufacturers to agree, the majority said yes, but there were a few big names that just point blank refused. So we had a re-think and managed to cobble together a solution where we would provide links to manuals that they wouldn't give us.

 

Again that seemed like an easy task and a great idea, but we found as products were discontinued manuals were deleted from their server and our links became useless.

 

Wothout us being able to host every single manual the already hellish task of keeping it up to date, gets about 6x harder. Since it was on a free basis the few of us that had planned to do it, just couldnt keep up with the workload, nor the phenomenal amount of documents that had to be uploaded.

 

As of us binning the idea, we had and still have around 10gb of pdf's on the server.

[Dj Dunc]

If you do ever consider deleting them all, could you put them onto a DVD for me? Its always handy to add to my lot of manuals

[Andrew C]

I've got to sit down and read something, dead trees all the way. To look a 'fine point' up, something searchable (pdf etc). For browsing, a proper catalogue (CPCs new website is better than it was) but give me the book any time!

[broadcast_techie]

One thing I hate is manufacture's websites where you can't download a copies of their manuals. I am often using kit which isn't mine and isn't always obvious on how it works. Also we get donated a large amount of our kit, without any support, again frustrating. I am currenly going through a server full of manuals to upload any relevant ones to the college's wiki. However, any bit of kit that I am working on gets the manual printed out, sorry trees, but sometimes it has to be done.

Oh to sum up, PDF's are more useful to future students.

[StuRobson]

If you do ever consider deleting them all, could you put them onto a DVD for me? Its always handy to add to my lot of manuals

 

yes please, that'd be good for my laptops harddrive too

[Dj Dunc]

a central place for manuals would be good but it would be impractical in some ways. I.e a blue room section with a custom entry and search table. so that when the user adds a pdf for a manual, then they add manufacturer, model + description and any other comments as needed. and then the user wanting a pdf can search using the above terms in single or combinations. would take a vast amount of work which is probably too much for most

[Modge]

Actually.... one model that might work. Would require a certain amount of cooperation between manufacturers. A body such as plasa would be perfect to organise it. All the manufacturers who want there manual available pay a contribution towards the costs of hosting and bandwidth and they're put on a website somewhere. Looking at the amount of negative comments Lighting desks in particular get when people can't make them do something which it often as not turns out they can if you can but find it in the manual I can't believe any manufacturers would not want to (assuming the price was not wholly ridiculous). Even easier, but a step down in terms of quality would be a page somewhere (the wiki for this site? - in fact there's nothing stopping manufacturers adding them now) with links to each manufacturers manuals.

 

Sorry about the train of thought style of writing, but I can't think of a better way to word it.

[tom_the_LD]

I like both, that way if I don't need the laptop, I don't need to take it to have a manual with me. The best thing about a PDF though, is that it is very easy to find something ie just hit ctrl + f, type what you want and it jumps to it reasonably quickly

[andy_s]

I'll just say again - if I were a manfacturer - I'd want people to go to MY website to download a manual, as this means they would come into MY shop window, where I can entice them to buy lots of other nice things.....

 

of course for non- current equipment, relying on manufacturers to keep this info available is a bit more hit and miss, some are better than others. Good to see the 520 manual is still available from Genlyte, for example..... I suppose if someone has all this available and can be motivated to scan / upload / otherwise make available all this stuff in one place, it would be good.