I've been reading this thread with some amusement.  The same type of thing
happened when Jane's Defence, publishers of fantastic reference books of
modern military equipment, began to publish on CD as well as printed books.
The CDs are the same price, to the penny, as the printed version.  Much loud
moaning ensued from the regular subscribers, who anticipated a discount from
the $250+ regular price.  Jane's (and Robert Bentley's, no doubt) was "You
are paying for the information, not the paper!"  IMHO, a searchable CD with
hyperlinks is a superior information resource to a printed book.  I'd pay
more for the CD :-)  And now, back to your regular scheduled programming.

Mike Snow
1982 Westfalia 1.6TD

 I was under the impression
> that books are expensive to typeset and print and bind, but CD's should
> be cheap, thus why user's manuals for software are no longer printed.
> Oh well, I guess they can demand whatever they want and we'll pay it,
> right? ;-)  That said, I'm sure the development costs ain't cheap
> either.  Having used some other "printed" manuals put on CD, they are
> really handy, especially when you have a thousand pages to flip
> through.  Plus, having hyperlinked text in sections is a big help too.
>
> My more philosophical problem with Bentley manuals on CD-ROM is that in
> 20 years, I don't see my kids stumbling across it in the garage and
> going "Cool!" and reading it, they way I did with my dad's 1968
> Transporter manual, or an old copy of Muir's book.  There's no nostalgia
> in a shiny disk!
>
> Keith Adams
> Calgary, Alberta, Canada
> 1986 Vanagon GL Westfalia, 1998 Golf Wolfsburg Edition