Technician Tuesday: More on how-to guides

Last week I wrote about what a great time it is to look for how-to guides. This week I ran across some how-to guides that have been around for several years.

A while back I purchased a Uniden scanner. I have been looking through Uniden’s support documentation on their website and while very thorough, it has a lot of information for more advanced users. There’s a difference between manuals for “here’s each option and what settings and attachments you need to use for each option” and manuals for “here’s some examples of what you can do with specific options and why you might want to use that option instead of the other three which look very similar.”

(In a completely different industry with completely different customers, this difference in types of manuals is why sewing and embroidery machine manufacturers are now selling “playbooks” in addition to the user manuals that comes with their machines.)

This morning I searched for beginner instructions on how to set up my scanner and found the sites Mark’s Scanners and Scanner Master. Scanner Master is a business specifically for selling and setting up scanners. And yes, they have how-to guides for a beginner which already look more helpful than what I was finding on Uniden’s site.