Where's My Documentation?

By Jerry Endres

Well, that just tears it! I just paid $50 for a huge, complicated program and the printed documentation amounted to 32 skimpy pages that did little more than tell me that the real instructions were in an onscreen handbook! Of course if you have been buying software in recent years you've bought many an "empty box." This disturbing trend needs to be reversed!

Software handbooks are appreciated by very few people, except the software makers who benefit from their low cost. It is difficult to consult your handbook while running the software package. It's difficult to underline an important fact or dog ear an interesting page. It's impossible to thumb through the book to find the section you're interested in.

I might be less angry if the price of software reflected the lower cost of manufacture, but I have yet to see it. The only reason I can see for omitting printed documentation is the lower cost and higher profits. While it is the American way to work hard and make a profit it is also the American way to give full value while you are doing it.

What can be done about it? We could stop buying the "empty box" software, but that would kill the golden goose and we would miss out on the next round of interesting software. In order to change this situation we must make our voice heard. It's the old story of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. We MUST complain long, hard and loud. Do so by sending emails to the people who write the software and those who sell it. Tell them, in a polite way, that it means something to you to have written documentation with your software. If enough of us do it this change will happen.

Jerry Endres
j.endres@home.com

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