Grrr!

[altivo]

What is it with manufacturers now that they think no documentation is needed for stuff?

I've spent hours in the last week trying to puzzle out the requirements to match air compressors with air brushes for art work. None of them, compressors or air brushes, give even a range of optimal requirements. You have to guess.

I bought Gary a new, larger MP3 player (with video and radio playback features he doesn't want because that's all you can get now) as a Christmas gift. First he couldn't use it because it needed the battery charged. So we did that. Now he can't use it because it is controlled by touchpad gestures and he's used to pressing buttons. No manual is provided. Just a flimsy sheet of paper that mostly consists of bad drawings. Have we become so illiterate now that no one can write a few clear sentences explaining functionality? Do engineers communicate in sign language now or what? If you want a "complete" manual you have to download it from the website. OK, did that. It consists of 58 pages, mostly incoherent babbling about how you can store thousands of "songs" on the device. Next to nothing about how to actually operate the damned thing.

This morning a library patron complained that she couldn't connect to the new wireless system. So I tried. I couldn't connect either, though the beacon signal was clearly detectable. Close examination revealed that the router was accepting connections, but no DHCP responses were being sent. Called the installer. He says: "Go in the mechanical room and unplug the blue box. Then plug it back in." This worked. But I have no idea why it was necessary or just what we were doing. This infuriates me, too.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I wrote technical documentation for a living. It's kind of a dull, exacting job, but certainly not so difficult that there's any excuse for just not doing it any more.

Good thing this is a short week.

Comments

[hrrunka]

I guess sometimes the switch-it-off-then-on-again approach is the simplest solution, but it means you don't find out what went wrong (or why), so it's technically very unsatisfying.

I guess the pictures may be an attempt to solve the problem of producing instructions in fifty or more languages. Lego kit assembly booklets seem to work that way, but they're extremely detailed step-by-step series of pictures. Sometimes a picture is, as the saying goes, worth a thousand words, but there are other times when that's most definitely not the case. The MP3 player's instructions sound like a prime example.

[altivo]

Right. This thing has no buttons or switches except for on/off and volume up/down. The rest is not a touch screen, but capacitive touch points on the plastic front of the unit. They work, but sometimes are hypersensitive so that just waving your hand over the device makes it go crazy. It has a lock function to disable everything but the physical switches and prevent accidental changes, but that didn't work properly until the firmware was upgraded. Another gadget rushed to market without adequate quality control and certainly without any documentation. The so-called "manual" is a lie.

Turns out that in order to get an audiobook to play the chapters in order, you have to put them into a "Podcasts" subdirectory. If you put them into "Music" it will insist one either "shuffling" them or else "sorting" them by inappropriate values. This is not explained at all in the limited documentation. The menu structure is modal, so the function of the touchpoints changes depending on where you are in the menu. It's just plain idiotic.

[hrrunka]

Ugh. Completely daft. :(

[avon_deer]

I am not a massive fan of touch screen technology. I much prefer having a solid keyboard, which provides feedback when interacting with it. Rather than the vaguarity a smooth surface. But it seems that is the direction we are heading in. I guess i will have to adapt. :(

[altivo]

I agree. Touch screens are unreliable garbage, and always smeared with disgusting fingerprints through which you must try to read the information they may or may not actually be displaying.

I do not plan to adapt. I refuse to buy touchscreen junk, period.

[frith]

My Wacom tablet and my Finepix camera are like that too. There are features I'd like to turn off on the Wacom and the video on the CD doesn't seem to have the answer. I'd like to adjust the colour output on the camera, and again, if there is a way to do it it is not in the printed manual (it might be on the CD).

[altivo]

Video? That's even worse. I refuse to use anything when the only instructions provided are on video. It's clear proof that the sellers are too illiterate to communcate clearly.

The Wacom at least probably has excellent third party documentation available if you go looking for it.

[bunny_plush]

We get the occasional patron who can't connect, and I look to see if anyone else is having troubles as well. Most times it is the individual laptop or deviice in error, and if it isn't a quick fix I refuse to go into their machines. How quick a fix? Some Dell laptops have a wireless control switch on the front that gets knocked to the off position. Whose brilliant idea was that? ;o)

Sadly, when things go awry, resetting the wireless router will almost always fix connection issues. As stated elsewhere, you learn nothing and can't adjust things to keep this from recurring.

[altivo]

True, it's often user error, and that's why I checked it out on my own device. We don't mess with anyone's equipment either, which just makes them more angry at us when it isn't working for them, but they'd be even angrier if we messed with it. Then they'd blame us for every problem they had for the life of the gadget. No thanks.

The wireless control switch is actually a good idea. It saves a lot of battery power (meaning longer battery life) if you turn off the wireless when you aren't going to be using it. Of course, most users never read any of the documentation and don't even know that the switch exists. My Asus has that function and I use it regularly.

The "blue box" actually is a cheap Linksys firewall, not the wireless router itself. This too is a distinction that would be wasted on most end users. To them, our wireless was "broken" but in fact the wireless router was working as it is configured to do.