Owners manual
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An owners manual (also called an instruction manual) is an instructional book or booklet that is supplied with almost all technologically advanced consumer products such as vehicles, appliances and computer peripherals. Information contained in the owners manual typically includes:
- Safety instructions; for liability reasons these can be extensive, often including warnings against doing things that no intelligent person would consider doing.
- Assembly instructions; for products arrive in pieces for easier shipping.
- Installation instructions; for productions that need to be installed in a home or workplace.
- Setup instructions; for devices that keep track of time or which maintain user accessible state.
- Normal usage instructions.
- Programming instructions; for microprocessor controlled products such as VCRs, programmable calculators, and synthesizers.
- Maintenance instructions.
- Troubleshooting instructions; for when the product does not work as expected.
- Service locations; for when the product requires repair by a factory authorized technician.
- Regulatory code compliance information; for example with respect to safety or electromagnetic interference.
- Product technical specifications.
- Warranty information; sometimes provided as a separate sheet.
Until the last decade or two of the twentieth century it was common for an owners manual to include detailed repair information, such as a circuit diagram; however as products became more complex this information was gradually relegated to specialized service manuals, or dispensed with entirely, as devices became too inexpensive to be economically repaired.
Owners manuals for simpler devices are often multilingual so that the same boxed product can be sold in many different markets. Sometimes the same manual is shipped with a range of related products so the manual will contain a number of sections that apply only to some particular model in the product range.
With the increasing complexity of modern devices, many owners manuals have become so large that a separate Quickstart Guide is provided. Some owners manuals for computer equipment are supplied on CD-ROM to cut down on manufacturing costs, since the owner is assumed to have a computer able to read the CD-ROM. Another trend is to supply an instructional videotape or DVD along with the owners manual.
[edit] Popular culture
The noun phrase owners manual has been used by analogy in the title of numerous instructional books about entities that are not manufactured products, such as pets, body parts and businesses.
[edit] See also
The equivalent document for computer software is called a user guide since users are typically licensees rather than owners of the software.
[edit] External links
- Manualsmania.com - More than 600,000 user guides and manuals to download for free
- SafeManuals.com - Very large manual archive for games, software and electrical appliances
- Lost My Manual! - Comprehensive (and free) manual download for all available Handphone and Cellular phones. ]
