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Nikon’s Curious Crusade Against Physical User Manuals!!

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kombizz0

kombizz0

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Apparently Nikon has decide to save few trees by no longer publishing user manuals in some of its digital cameras and not include them in the boxes. As a result of this new decision, few Nikon customers are not going to be happy.

To protect against Copyright Infringement, Nikon offers two versions of product manuals. A fully printable manual for existing owners (which requires a valid, North American, Nikon camera serial number and registration to download) and a non-printable version for others (no serial number required).
To read more about this, please click here.
http://gizmodo.com/5833154/nikons-curious-crusade-against-physical-user-manuals
--
I was born and brought up in Iran, a beautiful country full of history.
http://www.kombizz.com/
 
this is old news ,nikon announced that they were dropping, the printed manuals that came with thier products a few years ago .

and as far as the 2 different PDFs are concerned , if you know your way around software ,there is no such thing as non printable .
 
The latest physical manuals (eg, P7000) have been almost unreadable as they're printed in light grey text on a white page. Maybe they're trying to save on ink costs as well.
 
The nice thing about the pdf versions is it makes it really fast to find what you're looking for -- so long as you know what it's called.

Search for "focus" and acrobat will pull up ever instance of the word and show it in context.
 
kombizz0 said:
To protect against Copyright Infringement, Nikon offers two versions of product manuals. A fully printable manual for existing owners (which requires a valid, North American, Nikon camera serial number and registration to download) and a non-printable version for others (no serial number required).
Click to expand...
Recently I wanted to browse a nikon manual for a camera I was considering to buy, and found out this limitation. So I decided to buy something else.

Can someone explain what Copyright Infringements are they worried about?

Doesn't allowing printing manuals of their cameras help them selling more cameras?
 
pierpa said:
Recently I wanted to browse a nikon manual for a camera I was considering to buy, and found out this limitation. So I decided to buy something else.
Click to expand...
Wow, some people pick their cameras based on IQ. Some based on size, controls, or features of the camera.

You are the first person that I ever heard who based their decision on whether or not you could print out the manual before you purchased the camera.

I'm impressed with both your decision tree, and with your willingness to admit to it in public. There may in fact be others who share your no-printout=no-sale policy, but they are too embarrassed to admit it.

I'm also impressed that in the 14 months since you joined DPR, this is the first issue you felt was important enough to comment on.

I'm not even going to ask you why you want to print 100s of pages of paper for a camera you didn't even own yet.

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelthek/
 
Michael Kaufman said:
pierpa said:
Recently I wanted to browse a nikon manual for a camera I was considering to buy, and found out this limitation. So I decided to buy something else.
Click to expand...
Wow, some people pick their cameras based on IQ. Some based on size, controls, or features of the camera.

You are the first person that I ever heard who based their decision on whether or not you could print out the manual before you purchased the camera.
Click to expand...
Not only for this reason. But certainly it has been a factor.
Michael Kaufman said:
I'm impressed with both your decision tree, and with your willingness to admit to it in public. There may in fact be others who share your no-printout=no-sale policy, but they are too embarrassed to admit it.
Click to expand...
How fun. You have a career ready for you as a comedian.
Michael Kaufman said:
I'm also impressed that in the 14 months since you joined DPR, this is the first issue you felt was important enough to comment on.
Click to expand...
You are easily impressionable, I see.
Michael Kaufman said:
I'm not even going to ask you why you want to print 100s of pages of paper for a camera you didn't even own yet.
Click to expand...
To see what it can do for me before I buy it.

And, let me explain better: my questions in my previous message are not rethorical questions. I'm genuinely curious to know the answers, if someone knows them (or can suggest a plausible explanation).

Please note also, that until now, I had always bought and used nikon compacts, so I'm not writing just for dissing nikon out of fanboyism for another brand.

These compacts that I bought in the past however, came with a printed manual in the box, and a pdf manual was available on the web before I bought them.
 
pierpa said:
pierpa said:
I'm not even going to ask you why you want to print 100s of pages of paper for a camera you didn't even own yet.
Click to expand...
To see what it can do for me before I buy it.
Click to expand...
Can't you tell what it could do for you by reading through it on the computer? Is it really that important to be able to print it out before you buy the camera? I can understand someone printing out a manual for a camera they own because they want to keep it in their camera bag, but why would you print out that many pages for a camera you are only evaluating? And, if you are serious enough about a camera to want to print out 100s of pages, why would you decide to buy something else merely because you couldn't print it out?

I've heard a lot of reasons why people select one camera over the other. Some I agree with, some are a matter of people have different priorities in their cameras. But not buying a camera because you can't print out the manual before you buy it seems a bit silly to me. Some camera manufactures never release the PDFs of their camera manuals at all. Does that mean you will never buy any of their cameras?
So said:
Recently I wanted to browse a nikon manual for a camera I was considering to buy, and found out this limitation. So I decided to buy something else.
Click to expand...
It looked to me like you were saying you were considering a Nikon and then found out you couldn't print out the manual prior to purchase. And then you decided to buy something else. If I misunderstood your words, my apologies.

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelthek/
 
Michael Kaufman said:
pierpa said:
Michael Kaufman said:
I'm not even going to ask you why you want to print 100s of pages of paper for a camera you didn't even own yet.
Click to expand...
To see what it can do for me before I buy it.
Click to expand...
Can't you tell what it could do for you by reading through it on the computer?
Click to expand...
Yes, but with a great waste of my time. I can read printed pages while commuting on train or on the metro.

And I would like to understand why nikon thinks it is in their interest to force me to waste my time.
Michael Kaufman said:
And, if you are serious enough about a camera to want to print out 100s of pages, why would you decide to buy something else merely because you couldn't print it out?
Click to expand...
I felt that nikon is actively working to annoy me. And I prefer to give my money to companies that don't do this.
Michael Kaufman said:
I've heard a lot of reasons why people select one camera over the other. Some I agree with, some are a matter of people have different priorities in their cameras. But not buying a camera because you can't print out the manual before you buy it seems a bit silly to me. Some camera manufactures never release the PDFs of their camera manuals at all. Does that mean you will never buy any of their cameras?
Click to expand...
Of course. It is unthinkable for me nowadays to not have access to the manual of a piece of equipment before I buy it.
Michael Kaufman said:
So said:
Recently I wanted to browse a nikon manual for a camera I was considering to buy, and found out this limitation. So I decided to buy something else.
Click to expand...
It looked to me like you were saying you were considering a Nikon and then found out you couldn't print out the manual prior to purchase. And then you decided to buy something else. If I misunderstood your words, my apologies.
Click to expand...
I admit that my wording was ill-chosen. English is not my primary language.

I should have written: "this annoyed me a lot, and since there are many other compacts with a very similar feature set, I decided to buy from a more customer-friendly brand".

Apologies accepted. Thanks. ;)
 
I download every manual that is interesting for to my cell phone.

Then I can read it everywhere I like to or I need to and there is no requirement for printing it.

I always got the pdf-versions of the nikon manual prior to buying it.
This is all I need.

Save the trees!

--
Best regards from Hamburg (GMT+1).
Helmar
http://dahmerphotography.blogspot.com/
 
For a compact designed to be used primarily in point and shoot mode I say save the trees.... but if it's a more complex camera like the P7000 or any of the DSLR models then give me a printed manual. For these cameras it is more of a field guide and needs to be printed. Reading a PDF in the desert in bright sunlight is really not that convenient!
 
Makes perfect sense not to waste resources on shipping printed manuals - but I wish they would load the manuals onto the camera - the perfect place to keep them. Wouldn't cost much and we already have screens and processing power/memory to display them (some of the inbuilt help guides are going the right way but too basic).
 
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