...and instead burn any amount of fossil fuels from the amount of electricity involved in keeping their server(s) running and from people using home computers to access said server. Not forgetting the energy used by the communication infrastructure in place to facilitate the whole thing.
Why not a $1.99 postage and packaging sum to obtain your free Windows manual?
Sure, 99% of people might not need the manual. I don't need one, most of the people on this forum don't need one. Wouldn't it be useful though, to know every command, including the powertools on the XP disc and how they are used? What about the finer points of codepages (DOS related, but applicable to certain Windows functions)? There are any number of intricate parts to Windows which most of us (me included) haven't the faintest idea about. When I had my Amiga, I knew exactly what each and every file was for and what each commandline program did.
How many people know how to create an interactive batch script, or why you would even use one in today's modern environment? How many of us know how to relocate 'My Documents' to a different partition?
It would be quite satisfying to become professional in the use of XP professional ;) currently, to do so requires quite an outlay on training courses. Lots of them.
Office 2003 is definately a suite of applications requiring a manual. Online help is all well and good, but it is bloody frustrating not to be able to browse an offline resource. Of course, there are books available, but which one do you go for? Microsoft's own are criticised and there are so many 3rd party books that it is difficult to know which one to buy.
I could go on, but I'm sure I'd be ignored ;P
Why not a $1.99 postage and packaging sum to obtain your free Windows manual?
Sure, 99% of people might not need the manual. I don't need one, most of the people on this forum don't need one. Wouldn't it be useful though, to know every command, including the powertools on the XP disc and how they are used? What about the finer points of codepages (DOS related, but applicable to certain Windows functions)? There are any number of intricate parts to Windows which most of us (me included) haven't the faintest idea about. When I had my Amiga, I knew exactly what each and every file was for and what each commandline program did.
How many people know how to create an interactive batch script, or why you would even use one in today's modern environment? How many of us know how to relocate 'My Documents' to a different partition?
It would be quite satisfying to become professional in the use of XP professional ;) currently, to do so requires quite an outlay on training courses. Lots of them.
Office 2003 is definately a suite of applications requiring a manual. Online help is all well and good, but it is bloody frustrating not to be able to browse an offline resource. Of course, there are books available, but which one do you go for? Microsoft's own are criticised and there are so many 3rd party books that it is difficult to know which one to buy.
I could go on, but I'm sure I'd be ignored ;P