And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

[JustManuals]

Speaking of USB ports and thumb drives, I'm thinking of re-opening manuals4you.com but instead of selling CD's or DVD's which are going the way of the dinosaur and take up a lot of power on a laptop. I would sell USB thumb drives full of manuals. The problem is that I could say put on an 8GB thumb drive ALL of the K-M Bizhub manuals. I think currently there are 109 give or take a few manuals in the bizhub lineup, these would include the Parts & Service manuals and the Theory of Operation manuals
(which cover the peripherals) plus I could throw in some Frimware as well. I would have to price a drive like this in the $200 to $300 range as I certainly don't want to give them away but 109 manuals @ $12.77 works out to $1391 I think it would be a definite bargain for a company to purchase something like this. Similarly I could put all of the HP or Ricoh, or Lexmark etc manuals on thumb drives as well. I've looked into purchasing quantities of thumb drives and I could get them at a reasonable price including having my logo printed on them. Postage costs would be virtually nothing as what does a thumb drive weigh? (actually just about 11 grams, just under 1/2 oz.) I've already got the envelopes, $150 worth of stamps and the label printer just sitting here doing nothing.

So what I'm asking here is do you guys (And gals) think your managers would go for something like this? Of course I would make some provision for updates and additional files sent at no charge for say a period of 6 months or so.

I appreciate your input on this idea. If it's negative, don't worry, I'll get over it and die of something else.

Best regards and Happy Holidaze,

Paul

[Hansoon]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

If ALL firmware is included for a price, let's say USD 198.00 incl. postal charges, it could be interesting for Indy's who have no access to most of this.

A reduced price for updates and new manuals still to come (by download) on top of the basic package should be an option perhaps.

I myself have luckily access to most of the stuff but I can imagine that your idea is interesting for smaller companies and Indy's. The fat cats will get it anyway directly from the manufacturers.

Regards

Hans

[JR2ALTA]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

I'm interested.

But USB Sticks that you buy in bulk with logos are meant for promotional/marketing purposes.

They will not last especially with the wear and tear of a traveling tech.

You might look into an ftp site and sell the login/password.

[Hansoon]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

You might look into an ftp site and sell the login/password.

Good idea but not exclusively. Not everybody knows to work with FTP and its logins. This would otherwise reduce the customer base.

Hans

[JustManuals]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

The FTP site does sound interesting, but then I would need a separate log in and password for each customer, and separate permissions for each customer to only have access to specific directories, that could get mighty confusing. I would use the highest quality of thumb drives and have locks on them so some nitwit couldn't accidentally delete stuff by accident..Or maybe send 2 drives exactly the same; one for the field and one to keep in the office as a backup and to make copies from.

Thank you for your ideas and input.

Paul

[ZOOTECH]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

The FTP site does sound interesting, but then I would need a separate log in and password for each customer, and separate permissions for each customer to only have access to specific directories, that could get mighty confusing. I would use the highest quality of thumb drives and have locks on them so some nitwit couldn't accidentally delete stuff by accident..Or maybe send 2 drives exactly the same; one for the field and one to keep in the office as a backup and to make copies from.

Thank you for your ideas and input.

Paul

You would also want the drive to be protected from copying and then passed around. The two drives sounds good; if one becomes damaged, they could return it for a replacement for a small fee & S/H.

[JustManuals]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

You would also want the drive to be protected from copying and then passed around. The two drives sounds good; if one becomes damaged, they could return it for a replacement for a small fee & S/H.

Well, I don't think there is any way to protect it from being copied. I would want someone who bought it to be able to make copies for his service personnel. I see my manuals in a number of places. I put identifying marks on all the manuals on my site. There is a free site mentioned in another post here today that has copies of my manuals. I don't know how he got them but I KNOW they are mine. I've since changed all my log ins and passwords to my FTP and my hosting service. That site is down now........for a change.

Paul

[blackcat4866]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

I like the idea a lot. Especially if it includes firmware. It will involve a little organizational structure though. When a platform starts out new, quite often there can be 4 or 5 firmware updates within the first month. Kyocera is good for a firmware upgrade each month. It could be solved as easily as keeping a page that lists all of the firmware levels and dates, up to current. And retain the earlier versions. Some types of firmware require an installation utility ... this is getting sort of complicated.

I don't know how other techs feel about it, but I have no problem with downgrading firmware to a version with less damaging bugs.
=^..^=

[JR2ALTA]

The FTP site does sound interesting, but then I would need a separate log in and password for each customer, and separate permissions for each customer to only have access to specific directories, that could get mighty confusing. I would use the highest quality of thumb drives and have locks on them so some nitwit couldn't accidentally delete stuff by accident..Or maybe send 2 drives exactly the same; one for the field and one to keep in the office as a backup and to make copies from.

Thank you for your ideas and input.

Paul

you could have one login for each directory. really it's no more threat to you as far as sharing goes than a thumb drive would be

[blackcat4866]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

No slight intended, but you may need the assistance of a few members here to gather the appropriate utilities & firrmware. If you get that far in your project, I can help out with Kyocera and some Konica Minolta. =^..^=

[rthonpm]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

Both the FTP and thumb drive solutions sound pretty good, but to throw another curve in what about an a la carte USB option? As it stands now, I only support a specific range of models so having all of a manufacturer's manuals is a bit much, while having the up to date firmware and manuals for what I do service would have a definite value.

The FTP permissions potentially could be managed by groups so that everyone in the Konica group or Ricoh group can only hit those files. I deal more with Active Directory and CIFS as opposed to FTP, but I'm sure with the right management console it could be done.

While I'm throwing out ideas, what about a cloud solution like Box.com that allows you to specify who has access to what folders?

[Shadow1]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

Direct Ricoh techs and authorized dealers have all the manuals on our laptop - the FSD / DSD (Field Service Documentation / Dealer Service Documentation) is updated automatically by a script that supposedly reads the same repository as the TSRC website. (you have to be on Ricoh's Intranet or VPN) If you make your thumb drive an installer so the vendor could put it on all their tech's laptops you wouldn't have to worry about the drive getting tore up so much, and you could also set it up to be a subscription service where you send them another drive every 6 months with all the latest.

BTW the FSD info on my laptop is nearly 40Gig. There are broken and missing links on all the menus and massive gaping holes in some of the info provided. Maybe you could offer Ricoh your services to clean it up and test everything because whoever is doing it internally doesn't have a clue.

[Shadow1]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

...the preceeding advice was legally obtained, and does not contain any spam.

[Tonerbomb]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

...the preceeding advice was legally obtained, and does not contain any spam.

MMMMM I love spam......

BTW not all dealers get the auto updates from Ricoh.

[Shadow1]

Re: And Speaking of Thumb Drives.....

BTW not all dealers get the auto updates from Ricoh.

Obviously - that's why I said Authorized Dealers. Otherwise Paul wouldn't have much need to sell Ricoh manuals unless he was doing some sort of serious Value Add on his VAR business.

(It's Christmas - Paul can be a VAR for a few days instead of... well, he can be a VAR for a few days.) LOL - sorry dude, got nothing against anybody earning a living, just gotta get my digs in - you can be annoying at times...

...and I was serious about Ricoh needing somebody to sort out the mess they've made of FSD. Years ago (before we bought IKON) the information was all there, easily accessible, and had very few SNAFU's in it. Now that somebody decided to "Fix it" with the "Tech Toolbox" some of the machines don't even have the shop manual on their menu page, and almost none of them have links to the Accessory Parts catalogs like they used to - you have to look to see that the 100 sheet finisher is an SRxxx which translates to a Bxxx product code, then dig through a folder full of PDF's. Typical idiot engineer who doesn't have to use his product, and they won't fix it - or unfix it - it's so bad at times some of us would pay a reasonable fee to have it working like it used to.