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Subject:A direct attack on TW? From:Burke Michael <miburke -at- WSICORP -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:11:27 -0400
All
I wanted to pass on an interesting advertisement that takes a direct
swipe at a user manual I wrote, and at all user manuals in general.
A recent ad run by one of our competitors directly attacked our product
because of the existence of a user manual, essentially implying that
since we supply a manual for out product, then our product must be
terribly complicated. The manual in question runs a scant 50 pages, 30
of which are installation instructions, but this is hardly mentioned in
the ad.
Their product uses a special keyboard which you can use to access the
various elements of the software. So it doesn't need a manual.
Our product is intuitive enough that it probably doesn't need a user
manual, but since we needed to do an install guide, we decided to put
some interface instructions, as well.
Now I know that this is merely an ad that is running in a magazine aimed
at a very narrow audience, one that probably doesn't want to read a
manual (professional pilots). But, should we as TW be concerned about a
direct attack on a product based on the existence of a manual?
Michael Burke
Technical Writer
Anonymous Corporation (for legal purposes...)
