Re: On-line documentation vs Hard copy

[Lydia Wong <lydiaw -at- FPOINT -dot- COM>]

To add to Damien Braniff's comment:

<snip>
> Before moving to the next stage we are investigating exactly what the
customer
> wants - initial feedback is mixed with a lot of people pro manuals, even
those
> who are also keen on having online docs with easy navigation, full search
> facilities etc.  Personally I feel that the time when online will REALLY
replace
> hard copy is quite a long way off (despite the claims of some products).
In our
> case we also have to deal with a wide breadth of end users from the PC
whizzes
> to those virtually PC illiterate.
<end snip>

At our company we write to a very computer-literate audience (at least we
assume so--they're developers!), but we've been surprised by their devotion
to hard copy manuals. We've had LOTS of positive feedback that we still
provide manuals with our product. Users in small usability tests commented
on it, and reviews in trade journals have also favorably mentioned it. All
this positive response, and we provide pretty comprehensive online help
files, too.

The one exception has been international customers, who don't want to pay to
ship the book when they can download the product electronically. They have
been very pleased, then, that we provide our user's guides (and sometimes,
reference guides) in PDF format (no fancy extras--just the book printed to
and distilled as a PDF file). It saves them a lot of money on shipping, and
as Damien pointed out, they can print the book for themselves.

I don't know when, if ever, we'll be paperless, but in our case (as Damien
recommends), we will keep listening to our users.

Lydia
------------------
Lydia Wong
Technical Writer
FarPoint Technologies, Inc.
www.fpoint.com

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