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You know, as men we have many positive features. Most of the time we are diligent and responsible. We tend to be thorough and devoted to our work but when it comes to user manuals we tend to be…how do I put it mildly – less than ideal. The first thing we do when we get a new tool is throw the manual away. I guess this has been embedded in our DNA since 30000 years ago when we knew how to skin a bison or a woolly mammoth and we learned from our fathers and uncles and those in our tribes who were more experienced than us, who knows why but I know I have thrown manuals away just to go dumpster diving later when the bloody thing just won’t turn on.

Ten years ago this all changed for me when I came to Abrites. My first task was to diagnose my own Subaru. I asked if a user manual for the passthru and SSMIII was available and my boss told me – “Sure, as soon as you make the manual it will be available”. And so it began – I started writing the user manuals and the struggle with that continues to this day. To be fair there was some foundation back then but nothing like it is today – I had to test each feature and describe it to the best of my ability for you guys, so that you have something to refer to when using AVDI and the Abrites diagnostic software.
It wasn’t smooth sailing but my passion for writing was put to good use. Today, thousands of pages and updates later the manuals are not perfect but we have an absolutely new system in place compared to the early days – we test each feature and have a deadline to update the manual with our instructions towards you before the function comes out. Our user manuals are readily available at any time via the website Abrites Worldwide | User manuals  and people can open them with nothing but a single click anytime they are needed. This, I trust is more helpful and allows easy solution to most issues. With the help of our content and design teams we seem to have created a lightweight solution which is easy to read and not problematic to download.

I recently came across this old manual I seem to have created way back in the day and decided to compare it to what it is like today.

  

In this comparison I wanted to show you that evolution of what looked like a bit of an accident in the beginning and our attempts to turn said accidents into actual weapons of the proverbial war we call work.



I sincerely hope more and more people turn to the user manuals as I realized my disregard for them was an error I had been making all my life.
I only realized this when it became a profession for me but I hope you don’t have to reach that extreme.

Now since we are on the topic of weapons of mass instruction, I would like to take the time to do a shameless plug about the Youtube channel AVDI FAN.
Our friends the AVDI FAN Team started it years ago as a side project, and today it has 10000+ subscribers and about 100 videos of procedures shown in the best way possible for the crew. We hope you get the chance to take a look at it and hopefully learn something new, it is a pretty sweet source of tutorials.

To conclude today’s rant I wanted to take a moment to say that the history teaches us about our own mistakes – I learned to appreciate the “USER MANUAL” and I sincerely hope that you, the Abrites customer and also those who call themselves the “Leaders of the world” will take the time to look at what our experience so far has taught us. I will leave you with a quote by Ed Sheeran and the hope of better times:

My daddy told me, "son, don't you get involved in Politics, religions or other people's quotes"

Alek