I am pretty sure I am not the only person ever to have not been able to find the manual for some piece of gadetary or household item when you really needed it. Now, in my ever increasing old age I am getting what Keiron calls lazy. Personally I call it common sense and appreciate of what my time is really worth.

Therefore a while back (a couple of years to be fair) when I could not find the manual for something that is insignificant for the point of this post, it came to be that it would have been a great idea to have just been able to go to a web site and enter the manufacturer and product number and for a few quid download a PDF of the manual.

At the time, I couldn’t find anything that let you do this online. Yes you can go to the manufacturer’s web site, but they don’t all have the manuals available and sometime they want to charge you to get a printed copy. Trouble with this is that if I’m looking I want it now, not next week.

So it would have been the perfect solution. Drawback as I saw it was that you’ll need a legal agreement with all the manufacturers of major household items, but if you’ve got some balls you could do this easy enough. Offer them a a kick back from the sales of their manuals, while allowing to provide an add-on service to their customers.

I was about to write why I didn’t follow this through, but then if I do this 99.9% of my posts will be I did not have time - which is true.

In the end I went for the low-tech route: I have a big box in the garage of every manual I’ve ever had and if I want one for something I now know where it is. For me who could be bothered to sort this out, it’s 95% perfect. But then I’m also lazy as Keiron says, so if I could get access to one cheaply without wondering off to the garage from my office, I might be tempted.

Go forth and make money.