I hope you had a pleasant new year's celebration, I couldn't because where I am in the UK is currently on 24/7 lockdown.
Anyhow, I've got this silly question to ask, which may have been asked before and is not strictly technical, but I still think is important.
Here we go: When in the development cycle of a NAS is the user hardware manual written/produced?
The reason I asked this is because, back in the dim and distant, you and MDGM helped me to upgrade my first RNDuoV2 from the 2 x 2TB WD HD Greens I'd originally bought to 2 x 4TB Red HDs. And you warned me then not to put too much faith in the user manual and I subsequently found certain small but important details missing.
Again, my third RNDuoV2 became available on ebay because the original user could not get the device to work, I reckon because the manual, which he passed onto me, was of no help to him.
So. the above has led me to personally believe that a user manual is, more than likely, produced before the NAS it's intended for actually rolls off a production line. And as such, the missing information, caused by necessary production changes, is never added to the manual.
Anyway, I hope that either you or another forum member can add something solid to my current speculation.
Well, certainly they need to write the manual while the product is in development.
However, they do revise the manuals from time to time. The v2 was introduced in November 2011; and the current v2 manual is dated September 2012. That is aligned with the release of 5.3.6 firmware - so there could be some things missing.
Thanks for your quick reply but I was only partially thinking about the RNDuoV2, I was more concerned about whether this practice of writing manuals before the product is complete is still ongoing.
Also, if the "from time to time" manual updates are done in a timely manner (no pun intended) and are not left being constantly being overtaken by the latest software releases then new users would not find themselves lost and "up the creek without a paddle".
So, looking at this as a novice, where the manual is the thing that shapes a user's perception, shouldn't Netgear pay a bit more attention to their manuals and then guide new users to regular updated online pdf's.
However, I do not know how much would be taken out of Netgear's bottom-line if they paid a little more attention to the user manuals, which would pay dividends in new user take-up. Because right now I believe Netgear has virtually abandoned the new user market, which they dipped a toe into in 2011/12, and is now concentrating on the semi-pro and professional markets, which is good for the bottom-line but a shame for new users because they do make solid NASes.
Anyway, I'm a novice user not a business man and I'm just kicking out some thoughts.
Well, the recent pattern with OS-6 is that they've updated the user manual for every major release - so they updated it for 6.10.0. Personally I think that is reasonable.
There are a lot of questions raised here that are addressed (with the answers easily found) in the manuals. So while I'm sure some users will go to the documentation for answers, it's quite clear that a lot of people don't.
While it would not help with intial set-up, a simple button in the GUI that takes the user to the manual for that version of the OS would certainly be useful. Ones all over that point to a specific part of the manual for that function would be even better, though probably hard to maintain.
Of course, that still would not point a user to manual changes not associated with an OS update (for error corrections and clarification, for example).
