Manual Hardcopy

[Griffitz62]

I finally broke down and got both HTTR and COTA when they went on sale. I was wondering if there was an easy and cheap way to get the manuals printed and bound? I checked out the Matrix/Kinkos thing aarangement, but neither game comes up as an option to order through Kinkos. Am I missing something?

Ken

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Griffitz62
I finally broke down and got both HTTR and COTA when they went on sale. I was wondering if there was an easy and cheap way to get the manuals printed and bound? I checked out the Matrix/Kinkos thing aarangement, but neither game comes up as an option to order through Kinkos. Am I missing something?

Not really.

Depending on where you live you could shop around - and be very selective at what you print - for instance the tutorial is a lot easier with a printed copy at hand versus alt-tabbing from the game to the pdf

and if you're going to print ... - better take this along as well :

ftp://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/conquesto ... 2-2005.zip

It's MarkShot's mini-guide - well, *mini* is maybe not the correct word - and it shows you how he tackles a particular scenario, what he intends to do and why and how this translates to the COTA interface. Recommended.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[HansBolter]

My local Kinkos charges 89 cents a page for color printing.

I actually find it cheaper to spend $60 on a set of ink jet cartridges and $3-5 on a package of paper and print them myself.

If the manuals are small enough I can get more than one out of a set of cartridges. I just printed the 220 page manual for WitP and the 60 page tutorial on one set of cartridges.

I then take them to Kinkos to have them spiral bound for $5 each.

[MarkShot]

Almost a $1/page, yikes!

In the past, I had a black laser printer and color ink-jet multi-function. I would print all the black pages on the laser and just send the color ones to the inkjet to save time and money.

However, this year when the laser gave up the ghost, I decided to get a small office color laser (networked, duplexer, color, 22ppm). Given the costs you are citing and that I like hard copy docs ... things like SH3/GWX docs are up to 600 pages, I think the new HP printer may well have been the most cost effective solution. Being able to zoom through a manual and print both sizes to lighten it up is simply great! However, now that I think I am actually saving money, I feel even better.

BTW, thanks for recommending my PDFs. I also think the HTTR PDFs are quite useful too (even for COTA), but I feel bad that anyone has to pay for them as the spirit of my effort was "free". I guess it depends on the individual how much they want printed materials.