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>For a company to buy enough copies of Office
>yet not pay for the user manuals is truly lame of them. Companies like
>this should be hounded out of existence for having such myopic
>management. Companies like this not only fail in the long run, they
>also make the lives of their sys admins that much more unbearable
during
>regular business hours by not letting their employees get up to speed.
My company "buys" MS Office because it comes bundled on the computers we
purchase (from a very large and well-known manufacturer). We get a good
deal on the computers and the software, partly because neither we nor
the manufacturer has to pay for manuals. Most of us don't need a manual
all day, every day - for instance, I've only needed to look at a Word
manual one time in the last 4 months. And even though our PCs also come
loaded with Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, I never use them, nor do many
of our engineer/programmers, so it doesn't make sense for my company to
pay huge $$$ for documentation that won't be used very much. Instead of
spending money on docs, the company instead provides every employee with
a super-fast PC with lots of memory, a very nice monitor, and super
sound & graphics accessories. Since we do use our PCs all day, every day
(mostly, anyway), most of us would rather have the fancy computer and no
docs, than a slower PC and docs that might get used once in a blue moon
by only a few employees.
Besides, at many companies (this one included), manuals are often
purchased out of the department budget as needed. Other people's mileage
may vary, but at most places I've been, a ratio of one manual per 5-10
users is usually sufficient, as long as the manuals are easily
accessible to everyone. It works surprisingly well.
Chris Welch-Hutchings
Senior Technical Writer
Home Wireless Networks, Inc. mailto:cwhutchings -at- homewireless -dot- com
