There's something comforting about the heft of a good, solid manual, isn't there? And if 1) you don't have a functioning computer, or 2) you wanna read in the john, a printed manual is more-or-less mandatory.

I've been getting fonder of pdf manuals, though (when properly indexed, much preferred over their html counterparts, though chm files ain't so bad). I like to be able to copy-n-paste sections to which I frequently refer into a kind of mini-manual, which can be nicely printed if need be. One can always photocopy from the original printed documentation, of course, but I don't find that as elegant a solution. I've even resorted to taking screen-caps of the relevant pages of a pdf manual and stitching the bits together in photoshop (it's easier with Acrobat writer, though).

I also really apprecitate that a pdf manual can be backed-up quickly and reliably onto both a harddrive and another cd (I'm a real beleiver in the notion that until you've got three copies of something, you don't really have it at all).