So Not Helpful

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

So there I was, kids, in a hospital about to replace the mobo in a high-fallutin' tablet PC. Gateway had so helpfully included instructions on just how to do this, photocopied from pages 77 to 81 of the top-secret, need-to-know, eyes-only product manual. Except two of the pages were devoted to the likes of...

3. Remove the battery by following the instructions in "Removing the Battery" on page 8.
4. Remove the hard drive kit by following the instructions in "Replacing the Hard Drive Kit" on page 10.

Ah, good times.

Comments

[nem0.livejournal.com]

Lenovo's laptop manuals are the same way, but at least you can download the PDFs off their website. Still, kind of a pain when you're elbows deep in screws and little plastic things, and you have to flip from page 112 to page 52, which then refers you to page 27, which tells you to follow the instructions on page 5...

[stimpy.livejournal.com]

It's like a 'choose your own adventure' book! Do you want to remove the small silver screw? yes-page 31; no-page 57
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Page 31: The small screw gives a yelp of victory as it jumps from the end of your screwdriver deep into the bowels of the device, you think you can see it at the bottom, but it is stuck under another part. Do you want to retrieve the screw? yes-page 15; no-page 42
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Page 15: You have taken most of the device apart, the screw is in sight! You remove the final piece trapping the screw, and hold it aloft in triumph! You now have a pile of parts and screws around you that you were sure you would remember exactly how to reassemble without documentation. Will you attempt to re-assemble the device? yes-page 13; no-page 83
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Page 83: You convince the customer that it was a software problem and that they should send this baggie of parts in for warranty repair. Victory!

[jecook]

::awards you 50 golden coins, a one up, and a mop::

The mop is to lean my desk. Soda|nose >desk

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

Gateway's like that. For quite a while they didn't even want the vast majority of their rank and file phone techs to have access to those manuals (Why did they need them? They weren't going to be telling customers how to be replacing any of those parts over the phone anyway).

Really, it has to do with them allowing the ODMs to bully them around into not letting them share the manuals with anyone. Given that they've been in a fight to post profits, it's understandable why they call that one a small issue.

[brotherflounder]

Compaq does the same thing, but at least most of their manuals are in the same PDF. What's really annoying is when they'll combine two seperate models of laptop in the same manual.