I don't know if it was my biorhythms or what, but Sunday was a terrible day. I now have a nice pea-sized crater in my windshield courtesy of a drive on I395 in the Washington area, and worse yet, it seems like the hard drive in my TiVo melted down. I've ordered a replacement hard drive, so hopefully tomorrow I'll be back to normal (I'm having to actually record a program on VHS tonight--yikes!).

I ordered the drive from WeaKnees, and one of the things I found interesting was their practice of putting their installation instructions online:

When you order a WeaKnees.com TiVo upgrade, we will send instructions specifically written for your TiVo. These instructions have been created and improved over the years to insure that your upgrade experience is simple and straightforward.

tIn fact, we want you to see--in advance--just how easy the TiVo upgrade process can be with the right kit and the right instructions. We have therefore made available our customized instructions for each type of TiVo upgrade, for each variation of TiVo recorder, in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

I realize they aren't the first (I've downloaded manuals for cell phones and PDAs before too), but it occurred to me today what a useful practice this was for smaller companies too.

My primary motivation in deciding "TiVo hard disk replacement?" or "new TiVo unit?" was cost. But I'm feeling warm fuzzies now because the docs make it look pretty straightforward, even for someone like me, who doesn't normally go into the guts of my electronics.

06:24 PM | linkme | home