Do you read owners manuals when you purchase something new?
I don't know what I would have done without the owners manual to my digital camera. We all think we know how to take pictures, but there was just so much information on improving picture quality that I'm glad I didn't just try to figure out on my own.
What owners manual have you learned the most from?
Do you know anyone who writes owners manuals for a living?
[question posted by makingpots]
responses and comments:
Hi makingpots! Never knew anyone who writes owners' manual for a living. I do read owners' manual everytime I make a purchase of any gadgets or appliances. I do believe that having an owners manual will enable anyone to use the product more efficiently and effectively. Take care and have a great day! lovelots..faith210 [faith210]
Hi, faith210. A manual reader.. Is is kind of funny the number of people I have known who wrote owners manuals for a living. [makingpots]
i can read them & not learn a thing. i have to be shown how to do something. i know of noone who writes manuals. [ANTIQUELADY]
Haha. I like to be shown who to do things. [makingpots]
I have a tendency to play with stuff first and only use the manual if I cannot figure it out. Most of it is trial and error. I do not know any who does but I figure I do not need to know how it was created, only how to do it, like driving a car, I just need to know how to drive it, not build it. LOL [nanajanet]
LOL I imagine wanting to play around first is human nature. I tend to skim through for special features. [makingpots]
I tend to skim through owner's manuals and not pay too close attention until or unless I run into a problem. Digital Cameras are good examples! They can be quite complicated - at least to me. I don't know anyone who writes owners manuals for a living, but I can imagine that it's a hard job. [peavey]
I was never much of a owner's manual reader myself until I found all these amazing special features of my digital camera that I would never have figured out on my own. Now, every new item I go looking for special features in the manual. [makingpots]
Manuals these days are so huge they are like more boring versions of War and Peace. Only because they are written in 50 different languages, and when you do eventually find the English bit, you find it is only a dozen pages at the most. As it has taken me sometime to find the relevant section, I think it is only fair on myself to actually read it. As for cameras, I am a point and shoot man myself. By definition you would think to take a decent picture you would only have to switch it on (which means finding the on/off button), point, then shoot, but oh no! Many a time I have accidentally moved the selector switch onto video and lost the moment, or after changing some of the settings such as flash off, or macro, forgot to put them back to 'normal' and couldn't remember how to do it. I can spend many a happy hour just going thru the settings and not actually taking pictures. I have written a manual, or at least part of one. They are actually idiots guides and it is quite appropriate that it is I what wrote it! lol [Scoop_Dogg]
Again, thanks for BR. I never did reply to your question. I have written a few technical guides for systems I have developed in industry. Very boring stuff! yawn [Scoop_Dogg]
Hi Makingpots, I am terrible for not reading instruction manuals and the one I have learnt the most from is the Haynes car manual as I do check things in that and do a lot of stuff on my car myself if I am able to. Huggles. Ellie :D [ellie333]
:) Hi, ellie333. I had fun looking through my car manual at all the little special things in my car. Haha, sounds weird, I know, but never would have known about so many things. [makingpots]
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roflmao!!! [makingpots]
I know when I have not read instructions and owner's manuals it has been a big mistake. None of them stand out in my mind. I do not know anyone who writes owners' manuals, but I am sure it is a special person, possibly a good income. [GardenGerty]
It is not a very exciting read, but I've learned it IS a mistake not to read them. [makingpots]
I don't know anyone who writes owners manuals...man that would have to be a tough one. I wrote a manual for work once..it's a toughy. The one I learned the most from is from my cell phone. Or the one for my camera....but I think I relied on the cell phone one the most. [jillhill]
Seems like I am always looking up something in my cell phone manual. This one I have now has way too many abilities. [makingpots]
I am not a technical kind of gal. I don't understand half of what I read in manuals, and it is frustrating. BUT, I do read them, and I keep them, unlike my son, who just tosses them once he as looked them over. I use mine when I need a reference, or if I want to see if the camera, or the printer/scanner will do something when I get an idea. My cell phone has a freakin novel for an owner's manual! I am not kidding, that thing has as many pages Tale of Two Cities! I discovered, by chance, that my phone has video, audio capabilities. Why, I don't know, it doesn't even take good pictures. I am sure that if I read the manual cover to cover, I would find out that it would make dinner for me, if I programmed it right. My digital camera and my printer manuals are the ones I have learned the most from. No, I don't know anyone who writes manuals for a living. Would you WANT to write one? I can't even just TELL someone how to do what I do, never mind writing it all down and making diagrams. [thebohemianheart]
Ok, thanks, going to my phone manual right now! *L* [thebohemianheart]
Hi makingpots, I do read manual for camera, cellphone and even rice cooker! LOL! I always love to read since it's always different from my previous stuff! It's always nice to learn and know how to take care of the new purchased item!happyhappyhappy [checapricorn]
Haha..... can you believe I have read a rice cooker manual not long ago. After years of just cooking it on the stove I finally broke down and bought one. I just wanted to make sure I took full use of it's options. I use the cooker all the time, it is great. [makingpots]
Yea, I do on electronic stuff. Or well the parts I need. LOL! If it's something wood that you put together I rarely do. hee [Irishfrndly65]
doh I'm just a little slow. [makingpots]
When all else fails read the instructions! Does it have pictures? I'm a visual learner. I have to be shown. I guess I'm like you and my camera manual is the one I've read the most. My vacuum cleaner is the next. I have to get it out every time I have to change the belt. Never can remember how to get the bottom plate off. Fortunately my daughter-in-law who lives next door knows all about cell phones and showed me how to use mine or I'd be getting the manual out every time I had to do anything. Some of the things she showed me aren't in the manual, or if they are I can't find them. [thebeaddoodler]
Hi, thebeaddoodler. Everyone needs someone like your DIL in their life. [makingpots]
I would say that most people do not read manuals when they purchase something. Neither do I. Most of the time I would keep the manuals aside and try figure it out on my own. Unless, I am really stuck using it or having real difficulties is using it then only will I go dig out the manuals and read it. [rtslvtwy]
Hi, rtslvtwy. Welcome to myLot. Yes, I've always kept them handy to read as needed until recently. [makingpots]
Most of the time I do not read the owner's manual completely. I look up what I need to know, try it and move on to the next questionable area where I need help. There are so many things to learn about a new product that I get confused trying to read the entire instruction book and apply what I've read all at once. Nope, I don't know anyone who writes owner's manuals for a living. [carolbee]
Me too, I kinda hunt and peck around for the fun stuff in my owners manuals. [makingpots]
You know I never thought about the fact that there are probably people whose sole job is to write the owner's manuals of things. I always try to read or at least skim one when I get something new. My husband never reads instructions of anything. We recently bought "System Suite 9" for our computers. It is several hundred pages of excellent and detailed information about the program. Of course hubby said it was too big and he has not read it. The worst one I have seen lately is the one that came with our Lexmark 9500 series printer. It is not very clear on many things and does not explain clearly how to do things. I've had to do some things by trial and error cause the manual is lacking... [jillmalitz]
i always read the manual before i start using any products i bought. i read directions too eventhough i know how to do it. i read just to be sure because different products of the same kind results better if you read the directions including shampoos. well, there's an e-How and the woman who created it earns it for a living. i'm not sure what's her name if i'm not mistake she's a she. [soundfreak22nd]
LOL, I have to admit that no, I do not read owners manuals. I don't even ever save them! I learn best by practicing and playing around with things. That's how I learned to use my digital camera. Luckily mine isn't so difficult to figure out, it's a very simple model, but works great for me. I did once however have to look online for my thermostat manual, and my cordless phone manual. My kids were playing with them once, and my answering machine on the cordless phone was speaking in spanish! I didn't know how to change it, and I don't understand spanish. So I looked for the manual and learned how to fix it. Then because of the kids my digital thermostat was reading in celsius. Well I'm horrible at converting that, so the house was always either too hot or too cold, I couldn't figure out the right setting. So I had to search the internet to figure out how to get that back to Farenheit. [katsmeow1213]
I'm not good with anything technical. My brain is not wired that way so I usually rely on my children to help me. I did learn a lot from the manual with my lelctric stove though. I even found the button to turn on the light in the oven. That made my day. rolleyesI cannot yet turn on the generator when the power goes and have to learn this before my son departs. I do not possess a digital camera but would love to own one and learn how to use it. I lost the instructions that my daughter carefully wrote down to use the DVD. Is there any hope for me I ask? crycry [cynthiann]
I don't tend to read manuals to be perfectly honest. I prefer to try to work out how to use the product myself, and if that fails than I will go to the instuction manual for guidance. I find them too uninteresting, and actually rather hard to understand. It's easier for me to work things out for myself. [GemmaR]
It would most likely be technical writers who write for the manuals. Writers submit the writing and then the company publishes them, from what I can gather. I have to read the owners manual to know how to use something properly. [OreoCookie3]
I am very bad about not reading the owners manual and later on when I have lost it and I need to know something I wished that I had read it. There are a few things that I saved it on like my digital camera and a few others though I have trouble just sitting down and reading it so I tend to only look at it when I have to know how to do something that I can't figure out on my own. [alyssakenzie]
Yes I do read the owners manual I purchase things because sometimes thats they only way to figure out how it works or how to assemble the item right, but if the manual is to complicated I might put the manual away and just wing it and hope for the best, lollolhappy [apples99]
yes I read them because I always have trouble figuring things out, and most of the time it is too technical and my son ends up rereading it and explaining to me what has to be done. I used to know a woman on line that wrote technical articles, how to operate this and that, but she was a freelance writer so she wasn't employed by anyone in particular and now I have lost touch with her on the net. [winterose]
I started to post my response, typed the whole thing out and then the darn site went down for maintenance, and I lost everything. What I wanted to say was that I always read the instructions, or I never know how to work anything, but the trouble is half of the time, I do not understand the instructions, they can be too technical for me. I get my son to read them then and then he explains it to me in a language I can understand. I never know manuel writer that worked for a company steady. But I did know a freelance writer on line who wrote for several companies, she wrote a lot of technical articles that was her full time job. But I lost contact with her years ago. [winterose]
I work as an engineer so yes owners manuals always comes in handy when installing new machines in the factory iam working in so i always ready them .... but i didnt know anyone who do them for a living YET ..... ;) [kilani123]
a few years back I bought an entertainment center from wally world right you know the kind you take home and put together yourself and I am pretty good at reading blue prints and I looked at this so called Manual and was like wtf! lol lol it was like take part g and put it in part p then take part g and p and put it in a and it went on and on like this lol well after all is said and done it was up and standing after like 3 hours lol and a month later I went to move and as soon as I took the tv and stuff off of the stand it fell like a house made of cards lol lol lmfao lol thank god it dint fall with everything on it but now the BF puts it all together lol [sxrxnrr45601]
I make it a point to always read the manual everytime I bought something. I don't assume that I already knew everything. So I still rely to manual for further knowledge regarding the product. It is important especially to avoid misuse of the product. [izathewzia]
Hi Pots well to be honest, most of time i dont read complete ownermanual, but sure i reas as how to install it first, but dont go for more details untill needed, and whenever i need detail, i consult with it as i keep it safe, some times i do try to learn things by PRACTICE too, or consult others tooo Hmmm, i am not sure if some one writesManual for living as its Tech detail and only concern company its technicians can give you guid lines Best Regards Zass [cupid74]
Hi making pots I find it is a must to skim at least the users manual. When you read such manual you are making sure you are getting the best out of your product. When I bought my car I made sure to read the manual from cover to the last page. I wanted to make sure that I would not make something bad that could damage my car. (c) ronaldinu 2009 [ronaldinu]
Yeah, like sewing machine manuals....... hahaha. Still cracks me up!!! Mmmmwwaaaa! Miss you love. [pajamamama]
Thanks, pj, I came here looking for a nice laugh tonight. Laughed right out loud. What WAS our problem....... you'd think we were two blondes that day. Miss you too, hang in there dear! [makingpots]