Re: Loose Cannon: Who Owns the Owners Manual, DIRECT Newsline, May 31, 2002.
I completely agree with your recent article on owners manuals. In the past six months I’ve used the following owner’s manuals.
1. Gateway computer
2. Cateye bicycle computer
3. Computer desk purchased from Organized Living
4. Stainless steel workstation from SAM’s
5. Bookcase and storage unit from Target
The only product that was customer friendly was Gateway. They get high marks for their instructions. Large fonts and color coding were used very effectively. I’ve hooked up computers before, but I could see that someone that has never owned a computer could easily assemble this one with Gateway’s instructions (purple corded end to purple coded port). The other manufacturers fall off the cliff of usability after GATEWAY.
Cateye’s manual and online PDF were so small my 31-year old eyes could hardly read them in good light. The computer desk took eight hours to assemble because I had to decipher MM from part DD and attach to BB in proper sequence. If I had not gone through this ordeal, it would have taken an equally long time to assemble the bookcase and storage unit. Thankfully, the steel workstation only had four legs, a shelf and a top. Therefore, I did not have to rely on the instructions. After assembling the workstation I read the instructions. If I had read the instructions first, who knows what I would have ended up with.
Mike Olwig
St. Louis, MO
Network
