You have it in one Bago, the trend towards deskilling and cost saving.
Decent printed manuals are now unavailable, you download a pdf or get a CD
in the post. Saves shipping and admin overheads on heavy books and printing
becomes a cost on you. Similarly with consumer goods. The no fault return
warranty from most traders these days mean that the consumer becomes the QA
inspector. Wouldn't be so bad if cost savings were reflected in better
quality and technical support but I get the feeling that the fast buck
means a lot more to manufacturers than worrying about their (captive)
customers.
"Bagotronix Tech
Support" To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL
PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]cc:
tronix.com> Subject: Re: [PEDA] tech documentation
WAS: OrCad to Protel
24-Jun-2003 03:23
PM
Please respond to
"Protel EDA
Forum"
> I'm not sure that it is good enough for Protel to decide that new users
> are insufficiently competent to understand more advanced concepts. I
> clearly remember way back in the days of Orcad SDT III getting
instructions
> about writing drivers at the back of the manual!! Also how to construct
> symbols from Ascii files ( a bit wierd that was but it worked).
I agree, I like having in-depth technical info available when I need it.
But the tech business trends are in the exact opposite direction, and have
been since the late 80's.
I remember when:
1) Software came with big thick manuals, most of which were well written
and useful (examples: Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS, Quattro Pro 3.0 for DOS,
Borland C/C++ v3.0, etc.)
2) Consumer electronics items came with schematics at the back of the
owner's manual (example: most Radio Shack stuff before mid-80's).
3) There were no multi-lingual manuals, just English only for goods sold
into the U.S. market
4) You could call a company's tech support and actually get a real live
human on the phone without waiting very long. And that human actually knew
something about the product and spoke English in an understandable accent.
Oh, how I wish we could bring it back...
But, the tech business world operates by different precepts now, such as:
5) Users are idiots, and wouldn't be able to read manuals anyway
6) Tech support staff only needs to know how to tell the user to reboot
their computer, no other skill is necessary.
7) No consumer knows how to read a schematic anyway. Some just think they
do. And they will electrocute themselves trying to service their own
equipment, and then sue us.
8) We've got to publish every language in our manuals, so we don't have to
bother printing different versions appropriate for a given market. Never
mind that the user, if he can read at all, and if he is not too lazy to
read, will have to find that special 5% of the manual that is actually in
his language.
Best regards,
Ivan Baggett
Bagotronix Inc.
website: www.bagotronix.com
- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: [PEDA] OrCad to Protel
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