Jun 05 2008 at 8:38am
Why can’t they just give you instructions in one language?
I just got my new Thinkpad advanced dock (so I can hook my laptop up to my DVI monitors with a KVM switch. V. l33t 
). The docking station came with a users guide and a “Read This First” safety booklet. The problem is that the user’s guide includes about 13 languages and the safety booklet 34 languages. Do I need those languages? Of course not. It’s a waste of paper. And in this case it’s even worse because there aren’t separate sections for each language, it’s all mixed. You have to flip past all kinds of spanish and chinese to get to the English bits. The user’s guide also has about 6 pages of extra information for Turkey only.
What else could they do?
- Provide an language option when purchasing the product and only provide documentation in that language.
- Skip the paper documentation and provide a little card with a link to the download site. Nobody reads the documentation anyway, might as well save some trees.
And the worst part about it is that the user’s guide is mostly a bunch of bullshit. Thank you for purchasing this product blah blah blah, this is what it’s does, and this is what’s included in the package. Um, I bought the product I think I know what it does!
The connection instructions are on a separate poster with diagrams only, no words at all. I’m not sure which is worse.
The dock was also wrapped in molded syrofoam, unlike the LaCie external hard drive that arrived yesterday (not for me), which had egg carton like cardboard packaging. Boo to Lenovo (although I really like my laptop so I won’t criticize them too much!)
Andrew June 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I like your idea of including the card with the website address on it. I hardly read them anyways, and covering all the languages is pretty wasteful. It’s probably cheaper for the company to just include them in all in the box instead of sorting the products with English instructions from the products with Spanish instructions from the…
“If all else fails, read the instructions.”
Megan June 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Another thing they could do is add the manuals according to the country they’re being sent to. Canada gets English and French, maybe Chinese. US gets English and Spanich. British gets English only (printed in British English, not US English) etc. There would be separate booklets for each language, you’d just have to put in the right ones.
Interestingly, when I opened my Belkin Flip KVM switch it came with only one 4-page fold out pamphlet in English only.
Michael Aringer June 17th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Hi, I live in Austria and I have made similar experiences with packaging and user-manuals. I often wonder if it really is necessary to include two or more plugs for all possible countries. Beside the usual European plug with two pins I often get the British plug with three blades too. Instead of a manual nowadays there often is a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM included. I don’t know if this is better for the environment, but it comes it is more easy to find you own language (and drivers if it is something for your computer).
Megan June 17th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Hm, that’s interesting. I’m thinking the CD could be worse because then you end up throwing it in the garbage eventually. At least paper is recycleable (although I know there are some places that can recycle CD’s now).
For some products it could be much better, because you could include a video, for example, instead of unlabelled pictures. But, then, you could put that on a website too.
Extra plugs must be really annoying! Surely those go straight to the garbage or the depths of a drawer that will never see the light of day.