Well, there is the table of contents broken down in sections such as Electrical, Brakes, Suspension, etc. Then once you go to that section everything that is in there is listed. I have the second edition of the 2008/2009 Maintenance Manual and about 30 seconds is what I need to find the page I desire. I would have never thought it was difficult. You are correct that there is no index in the back.

I like how the progression of references tell you exactly what page to go to for preliminary steps or disassembly.

 

You know that you've entered the digital age, when your laptop and/or phone are the most important tools in the garage.

 

We are in the digital age but is that the best way to do things? I prefer to use both. I like the physical paper, easy to read with no need to pinch or swipe or wait for reloading. As Chuck S opined, you can make easy notes or add pages to stick in the book where appropriate.

 

I still have the OEM workshop manual for my old Suzuki GSXR 1100 in Paper, i bought this manual in 1993.
Back then, it would have been digitalized on 3 1/2 Floppy disk in Word 3.11 or something like this... Could you still read this today? I am not a computer geek, i have to add.

I took the extra effort, and used clear envelopes for every page of the paper version. Yes, i am a little bit crazy. But this book it is still readbale, after all this years and a lot of usage. No need of updates or so, just grab it from the shelf. Simple.
I have done the same to my new Kawasaki OEM manual. Therefore, you really could use it on the workbench with dirty, oily fingers. But i think it is a crazy effort to do this to the much bigger Honda S2000 manual. Print out or copy the pages you need for the work is a better idea in this case.

 

Thing that I like about laptops or phones --- often you can find needed pages faster. And "flip" from one page to another quickly.

I have most of the hard bound service manuals of all my cars I've owned. And some from my Dad. He was a mechanic. I have like two big shelves worth.

AND... you can take photos, on the spot, of what work you are doing. So nice for reassembling! Phones are so... so... so... slay sometimes!

 

Actually, I use my iPad instead of my phone, which despite being a large Galaxy, there is nothing like the big iPad. Both are great together.

 

Putting in serpentine belts, following photos of the original setup...

 

I had a digital copy and then a guy down the street from me, who taught auto tech at a local school, saw they were tossing a bunch of old shop manuals and remembered I had an s2k. He snagged that one and gave it to me, still brand new in plastic I have never used the digital one since. I seriously dislike trying to use a device when working on the car, other than reference pictures if I think I will need them. I much prefer to work out of a paper book for stuff like that. I honestly cannot recall where I found it, but previously I had purchased a copy on disk. I gave it away though after getting the paper copy. If I can find where I got it I will share.

Worst one for me was when rebuilding a friends ND1. Crashed and all panels and frame from firewall forward was replaced and we did all the disassembly and assembly on the mechanical side of things. The manual is all electronic format. And .... it used flash for a lot of stuff, which 100% broke when flash was depricated at the end of that year. So when we went to put the car back together, could not get any other versions of flash to work and we lost a ton of info that would have been very useful as the flash portions were broken. Again, paper manual would have been wonderful

 

I was just reading about a huge Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that occurred Sunday March 12th. It was ten to one hundred times more powerful than the 1859 CME that shut down all telegraph systems worldwide. We were saved by the fact the CME this time was on the side of the sun facing away from the earth. If it had not, pretty much everything electronic including banking, industrial, business, government and communication electronics and storage would have have been destroyed. Not sure about some of the hardened military systems that are equipped for EMP pulses. It was kind of odd that it was not reported in the press that much; it would have been a real catastrophe to modern life. We should have little to worry about for another century or so. But on the other hand, we know so little about solar dynamics – astrophysicists are very unclear about what the precise cause of CMEs is, for one thing – that we can’t be certain. We do know that we have two more years before the current solar cycle tops out, and so far, this has been one of the most intense on record.

All those digital S2000 manuals lost forever........

 

I hadn't heard of this latest discharge. I find astronomy and all that physics jazz very interesting. Esoteric and hard to get one's mind wrapped around.