Owner's Manual Format

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).

RST Engineering wrote:
Printing costs have been on a steady exponential increase, following
right along with energy costs associated with creating paper from
trees, soybean prices for ink, and all the rest of the process
involved with creating paper manuals.

On the other hand, the price of optical media (DVD and CDROM) is
plummeting. Anybody that has bought any computer electronic device
recently soon discovers that other than the single sheet "quick
start" guide, all the rest of the owner's manual is on CDROM.

I guess the real question is whether a 10-20% bump in the cost of an
aviation electronic product to provide a printed black and white
product manual versus 0% increase for a CDROM that can be done in
full living color is worth it.

(BTW, we can do ALL our manuals on a single CDROM, so you get much
more information on the whole product line than with a single manual.)

Jim

What aviation electronic product has a 10-20% bump in the cost of the
product because they have a manual?

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

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

RST Engineering wrote:

What aviation electronic product has a 10-20% bump in the cost of the
product because they have a manual?

Full range of offering: Website download (historical and latest) plus a CD
with the product plus an offer of a printed manual for a fee.

Some people prefer to download rather than loading a CD. Plus, when I reload
my computer or buy a new one, I can never find the CD. It's gotta be on the
website.

They can print it themselves (on the office color laser jet for no fee).

For those that are less comfortable, they can order the printed copy from
you.

--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK
"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
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

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

RST Engineering wrote:

What aviation electronic product has a 10-20% bump in the cost of the
product because they have a manual?

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.

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Travis Marlatte" wrote in message
. net...
Full range of offering: Website download (historical and latest) plus a CD
with the product plus an offer of a printed manual for a fee.

Some people prefer to download rather than loading a CD. Plus, when I
reload my computer or buy a new one, I can never find the CD. It's gotta
be on the website.

They can print it themselves (on the office color laser jet for no fee).

For those that are less comfortable, they can order the printed copy from
you.

--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK
"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
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

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

RST Engineering wrote:

What aviation electronic product has a 10-20% bump in the cost of the
product because they have a manual?

"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...

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.

I don't have a lot of experience producing CDs, but I can tell you that
generating and posting a .pdf to the Internet is a 15 minute job. If you don't
have the bandwidth on your own site, there are some excellent archive sites
(some free) that you can bookmark from your own webpage. As for generating
..pdfs, my HP all-in-one machine does that, or you can buy any of several $39.95
..pdf suites. Also, I understand that Open Office (free) will generate a .pdf.

This is not a big deal!

Vaughn

"RST Engineering" wrote

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.

My suggestion would be to do away with the printed manual, like everyone
else seems to be doing.

Send a quick start piece of paper, like the others, with links to where they
could find documentation online, using perhaps some of the suggestions
others have put here.

You can probably do that for free, with minimal one time investment of your
time. Put it all in PFD, and that can be the exact same file you put on a
disk to send with your product, so the non internet people can find your
manual to print, if and when they need to.

Don't sweat it, above all. If the print is killing your bottom line, then
your choice is made, IMHO. Do away with it.
--
Jim in NC

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.

"RST Engineering" wrote in message ...
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.

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


Charge extra for a printed manual. The new HP computer I just bought only includes the most basic set up instructions,
all the detail is either on the hard drive or online. They never even mention paper...

First of all, I don't think I suggested anything that drastic and not much
different than some of the other posts. Why jump all over me?

I merely suggested a well rounded approach that keeps your costs low. You
already suggested doing the CD in place of the printed manual. No problem.
You now obviously have the electronic files that can be easily uploaded to
the web. Minimial cost. I think you can get by without any printed manauls
but if someone insists, charge them.

There are many companies that provide the web hosted manauls only. CDs or
printed copies have to be ordered and sometimes for a fee.

Sounds like good customer service and a good business model to me. And yes,
I have but I'm not claiming to be an expert so it's irrelevant. Just hit the
delete key.

--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK
"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
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.

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Travis Marlatte" wrote in message
. net...
Full range of offering: Website download (historical and latest) plus a
CD with the product plus an offer of a printed manual for a fee.

Some people prefer to download rather than loading a CD. Plus, when I
reload my computer or buy a new one, I can never find the CD. It's gotta
be on the website.

They can print it themselves (on the office color laser jet for no fee).

For those that are less comfortable, they can order the printed copy from
you.

--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK
"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
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

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford


"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

RST Engineering wrote:

What aviation electronic product has a 10-20% bump in the cost of the
product because they have a manual?