Shop Manual. Paper or electronic?

shatter said:

I think I am going to pick up a set of 1969 Ford shop manuals. I can get it electronically via download for around $17 or purchase a hard copy for around $60. Has anyone purchased shop manuals as an electronic copy? If so, what kind of quality are the scans? Are the diagrams easy to read? Am I better off spending the extra cash to get a hard copy?

Thanks!

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I've downloaded a few shop manuals.

The quality is fine.

I hate them. THe big reason being that I don't have a computer in my garage and going inside, starting up the computer, etc to look something up is a real PITA.

The nice thing about the electronic manuals is that they are searchable (well, the good ones are).

I have the electronic version on my laptop, it's nice, you can use the search option which i think is really helpful. Eg. if you're looking for how to take of the emblems you just type emblems in the search bar and it comes up.

It does get kinda annoying sometimes to carry around the laptop, and if i dont want to i print out the pages i'm looking at. But when I do bring the laptop in i also do get music

and you can zoom in pretty far in with the electronic one