RTFM

I'm a big fan of instruction manuals, and I find a perverse sort of pleasure in reading them - even though I never really do when I get the gadget first. I wi ng it, trying to see if I could get it to run and at what point I'd actually ha ve to RTFM. I believe I once actually had a manual for the first Mac, but of course it's be en filed away in the Twilight Zone. If you'd like a chance to see how user's ma nuals for the first Macintosh looked like (yes, Virginia, ther e were paper instruction books back in the day, made of real paper), check out this Flickr album from a guy named Peter Merholz, who found an original manual in a garage sale somewhere. He blogs about it here. Dated, but still cool, and designed very nicely.