Or the space.
The dexktop area needed by a laptop and printer is not that
much smaller than that needed by a desktop PC + not-too-large monitor +
printer.
Understandably worried about failure, I can see where this might
Be limiting, but you wouldn't need to print if you could view
Onscreen, no? Though I understand how some people prefer
Paper to screen, sometimes it works better and is
More economical then printing out.
I _muuch_ prefer to read documents on paper than on-screen [1]. I can't
easily read from a screen in bed, for example (OK, I am the only person
who regards service manuals as light bedtime reading, but I do...). And
ehile I may have a reasonable memory for schematics, I certainly don't
think I can remember them well enough not to have to refer to them when
I'm working.
Therefore, I'd either need a machine that could sit on top of a
partly-dismantled minicomputer, survive molten solder and the odd tool
being dropped on it at my workbench, etc, or I'd need a way of printing
out at least selected pages. If I could view on-screen I'd probably not
need to print the entire manual, but even just wanting to print the
schematics or the waveforms, or whatever would need a printer.
It's also a lot quicker for me to flip through a paper manual and
recognise if a page is a schematic, listing, hex dump, exploded view,
general text, etc than to display the pages from a pdf file on any PC
I've eve rused.
[1] THe often-cited advantage of electronic docuemnts -- that you can
search them -- doesn't apply to containers of scanned images.
-tony
