Gather all those user's manuals that came with your new cameras, games, appliances, computers, etc. and send them to "The Cloud." With the ease of use of cloud computing, there is no reason to rely on paper copies of instructions.
If we were to carry the paper copies of our camera manuals with us on photo shoots and trips, it would add 1 lb 12 oz to our luggage. Besides, we still might not have them with us when we have a question or have the time to explore and learn more about the many options this equipment offers.
Here's our user's manual procedure:
- Download a copy of the manual from the manufacturer's site and save it as a PDF. (We normally download and review a user's manual before we buy a product. You'd be amazed how often this makes a difference in what we buy.)
- Upload the PDF to Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox. We use Google Drive and Dropbox all day long so they're our choice for manuals.
- Pack away the physical manual in case we ever want to sell the item.
- Enjoy having our manual available anywhere, anytime via our computers, phones, or tablets.
Bonus tip: Before you recycle a box that an item came in, take a photo of the label that contains the barcode, serial number, and model information codes and send that to the cloud. It can come in handy in case of a recall, loss, or theft.
It's usually months after using a new camera or computer that a quick look through the manual has one of us suddenly exploring a new option or trying out an alternative setting. This way we can explore the manuals while waiting for an appointment, sitting on a park bench, or at home.
Opening a Dropbox account from here is another way to support this site.
If you sign up from this Dropbox link, Dropbox will give both you and us bonus storage space. You can sign up for a free account to try it out, and you'll start with 2GB plus your bonus.
We understand that it also works well on the PC side of the computing fence. Dropbox has received rave reviews from The Economist, Forbes, and Wired. And the service has been given major awards by MacWorld and PC Magazine.
Details:
Words: Penny Cherubino
Artwork courtesy of Dropbox
Disclosure: We do own stock in Google and Apple. See our full disclosure policy.
