ManualsOnline Keeps Your Manuals Organised

Well, I tested it with four products and none was available.

Hard for me to believe that with a "claimed" 300,000 manuals online, there is not one manual for any of the Canon 4 Series digital cameras eg: A440 - A480

Donzie

@infmom: so true, so true =)

@sweetmonkey: It is definitely a lot of paper to hang onto. But it's nice to be able to get my hands on any manual I want, with little effort. When we get rid of something, we throw out its manual too.

@infmom: That sounds like a good solution, but it's still a lot of paper to hang on to. I almost never reference our manuals, making it even less compelling to keep them around and organized. This is a nice idea--I'll have to give it a try to see if the implementation is any good.

sweetmonkey

@SasmitaRufus: One device shouldn't be what makes or breaks the site. Though I would expect it to have the leader of its class models in every category. Like, failing to have the iPhone wouldn't be a good sign.

Anyway here, you go Samsung TVs.

Either you didn't search, made an error, or their servers erred, but they do have Samsung TVs listed.

jupiterthunder

@750: If you're never going to take the furniture apart again you don't need to keep the manual. That said, though, we have a separate folder for assembly instructions just in case we might want to find a replacement part for something. It's amazing how creatively people break stuff in this house.

@goodywitch: Based on my experience as a service tech, people don't read the manuals to learn how to use the product either. :)

Our manuals are already organized. Each room has its own file folder, the items used in that room go in it, and the folder is in the file cabinet.

So, does "RTFM" become "RTFMO" now?

Seriously, if this will replace my filing cabinet o'manuals, it's a good thing.

do people save a lot of these manuals? for example, the ones that come with furniture. after you put the thing together, is there really a need to keep the manual - online or otherwise?

@timgray: I think it's the thinking behind it. They hold the copyright so that OTHER companies don't steal the content, but if you're using a manual, you already purchased the product. You're not exactly reading a manual for entertainment value, but for how to use the product.

The community would be helpful for the hard to find manuals, but a "Manuals" folder on my Google Docs account is the easiest place to archive the ones I've already found.

GBot

When some household device stumps me (which seems to happen more frequently as the days and months roll by), I download the PDF from the manufacturer and store it in a folder on This Old PC.

Because TOPC is confined to the office and most of my household appliances are confined to other rooms, and because printing a copy seemed a waste, I used to run back and forth between manual and device, forgetting Step 2 on the run from manual to machine and forgetting what I wanted to learn on the run from machine to manual.

But then I got a Nokia N800 and now when I want to refer to a manual, I drop the PDF into Dropbox and pull it down onto the handheld (which is simpler than connecting PC and N800 via USB cable and rebooting the Nokia as a USB storage device and drag-dropping because I always forget the keypress combo on startup required to pull this off and I end up going online to read Nokia's FAQ about it) and then I carry the handheld to the room with the confusing machine and figure out how to make it work.

Now I suppose I'll just point the Nokia's browser at theusermanualsite and skip the PC in the middle.

All of this reminds me that what I really want is a solid Personal Cloud Computing solution. Dropbox, filesharing, backup, media serving, calendar, email, tasks, etc accessible from any of my devices, from anywhere, all kept up to date and in sync. A home network could do this for me, maybe, if I could tolerate the slow upload speed my ISP offers, and if I could figure out how to set it up. Better would be all that stuff hosted on a server I rent or buy from an ISP; I'd get the bandwidth I'm accustomed to, the confidence of knowing it's my machine hosting the data, and better reliability and redundancy than I can probably muster on a home network.

Like the idea of this.

(PS - kinda wish all comments would show as default when know "starred" commenters have graced us with opinions. When I came to this page, comments were empty, but a a message showed there were 6 comments available.)

Mr_Human

Looks interesting.

wolfman544

How does this not violate copyright? The different companies hold the copyright to the product manals.

timgray

If this site seriously contains all the ones I've got stored in my filing cabinet in my basement I will be very happy. Guess I gotta try it out to see for sure.

drdiesel

@alexmg2420: What are these mannn yooo ellls of which you speak?

Jason

@pdok: As a man, I can't think of a situation where reading a manual is a necessity to the point where one must actually READ the manual, so I'm gonna say, yes.

Ths s jst fr chcks, r

pdok

Is it just me or is half of the functionality of this site missing?
1. It let me create an account without entering a password, so I will never be able to log back in.
2. When I click on the link in my profile to change my password, it lets me change everything but.
3. I added a product that wasn't in their database, but there was no option to add the manual I had for it.
4. The "Upload Your Manuals" button, it just gives you a contact form to suggest a product.

Could be a nice site if they ever get it to actually work.

v-hacker

Anybody see a Security issue here?

I mean... let me list all my gizmos and stuff... let me tell where each is in what room of my house/apartment...

and then I'll post it online.

I mean... if I were an enterprising dubious individual... this would be like a listing house of a smorgasbord of products that I could go "borrow".

Steven Lynch

My way is all discombobulated. I keep a box on top of the pantry shelf. If I buy anything that comes with the manual, it gets tossed into that box. If I really need the manual, I just go and search the box.

Now on the other hand, there are now digital pdf manuals available online. When I buy a high priced item and I register them online, I download the digital manual which has a benefit over the paper manual because you can do a keyword search for something you're looking for rather than thumbing through a paper manual and not finding what you're looking for easily.

There are plenty of places to store files such as these online for free, but I love my Gmail search function so I would just email myself a copy of the pdf manual.

This site sounds promising but I wonder how long they'll last. That's the problem with websites; here today, gone tomorrow.

magnoliasouth