Ask HN: Well-Crafted Manuals / Handbook?

by FabianBeiner on 5/18/2021, 8:46:22 AM with 9 comments
I moved into my new apartment a little over a year ago. I bought lots of different stuff, like a new TV, entertainment center, vacuum cleaner, and so on.

Today I realized that I collected a whole box of manuals with them, most of them I've never read or touched. However, I tried to get them digitally — and it was not that easy. And by now I realized, that most — if not all — manuals out there are not good. The best thing you will probably get is a PDF file of the printed manual, but that's it.

So, do you know of any well-crafted manuals or handbooks? I'd love to see some of those! Well, if they exist.

  • by open-source-ux on 5/19/2021, 6:26:17 PM

    -- Washing Machine example:

    This is the user guide for the Dyson washing machine. The machine was released in the UK in 2000. It was expensive and a commerical failure.

    The user guide from 2002 is fairly well-written for a washing machine. Link to PDF (1.5mb):

    https://www.dyson.co.uk/content/dam/dyson/maintenance/user-g...

  • by cpach on 5/18/2021, 6:34:35 PM

    There ought to be some good ones over at the Internet Archive. But I don’t know any specific ones.

    https://archive.org/details/manuals

  • by hilbert42 on 5/18/2021, 1:42:40 PM

    For what type of equipment?

    I've got some links for likely the best ever written for electronic engineering test equipment.

  • by brentcetinich on 5/18/2021, 1:37:55 PM

    Emc symmetrix dmx series