CD Manual
Thread Starter
Safety Car
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 4,751
Likes: 2,499
From: Buckeye, AZ
St. Jude Donor '12-'13
CD Manual
Has anyone bought this? It says it is the GM original manuals in CD/pdf format. At $44 it would be a bargain being the printed set is around $400. Please give any opinions or inputs if you own this CD. I would like to order one.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Corvette-C-...!US!-1&vxp=mtr
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Corvette-C-...!US!-1&vxp=mtr
Safety Car
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 4,429
Likes: 1,377
From: SC
Probably a scan of the factory paper manual. As such, it will probably not have an index or searchable text. It would be nice to have a real factory manual on CD, don't know why GM is decades behind in this.
Le Mans Master
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 8,514
Likes: 235
From: Currently somewhere in IL,IN,KY,TN,MO,AR,MS,AL, or FL
Cost. Owner's manuals are free everywhere because the company has to provide one to every purchaser. Many companies are even dropping paper manuals and going with only digital. It costs money to produce the content of those manuals but that is a required cost and it is rolled into the price of the product.
But a shop manual is very different. It costs a LOT more to produce a document covering every facet of the product including disassembly and reassembly. And there are comparatively few people who will ever need that manual. So how to pay for the engineers to write it? The answer is simple - sell the product at lower cost by charging separately for the shop manual and charge only the people who need it. But wait. If it is digital it is easy to copy. Just ask the music and movie people. So if you have a digital version you MUST keep it on your server and charge for a subscription. That's why us peons will never get a "free" digital copy of the shop manual.
BTW, the nav DVD can be copied and that is why you see them on EBay for pennies while legally buying them costs $200. It costs so much to produce when you spread the cost among the few thousand that will be legally sold. The cost of the "free" GPS updates other companies offer is built into the cost of the units sold with the unit life factored in. My first Garmin required $200 map updates. DUH!
But a shop manual is very different. It costs a LOT more to produce a document covering every facet of the product including disassembly and reassembly. And there are comparatively few people who will ever need that manual. So how to pay for the engineers to write it? The answer is simple - sell the product at lower cost by charging separately for the shop manual and charge only the people who need it. But wait. If it is digital it is easy to copy. Just ask the music and movie people. So if you have a digital version you MUST keep it on your server and charge for a subscription. That's why us peons will never get a "free" digital copy of the shop manual.
BTW, the nav DVD can be copied and that is why you see them on EBay for pennies while legally buying them costs $200. It costs so much to produce when you spread the cost among the few thousand that will be legally sold. The cost of the "free" GPS updates other companies offer is built into the cost of the units sold with the unit life factored in. My first Garmin required $200 map updates. DUH!
