Start a folder or subdirectory on your hard drive called "Reference" or "PDFs" or some applicable name, as a repository for User's Manuals and other reference documents. Size permitting, burn it to a CD for easy transport when/if you don't carry your laptop. Many, many times on a job site, someone has needed the manual for some piece of gear to look-up or trouble-shoot something, and I have lent them my CD(s).
My current folder is 1.6Gb's worth of junk I've collected since about 1994, and includes things not available on manufacturers' sites, such as the original VL Series200 DMX modes, MicroVisonFX manual, and http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/...016004-nec-code-applicability-100-loading.pdf.
If you know you will be working with a new piece of gear, download the manual to have available should you (or someone else) need it. I believe this has been stressed in Brad Schiller's Console Programming articles in PLSN and also in his book, Amazon.com: The Automated Lighting Programmer's Handbook: Brad Schiller: Books.
As a lighting programmer, I used to carry a looseleaf binder with pertinent information, but it quickly grew unwieldy. I still will print out a gobo sheet for applicable fixtures, as it's so much easier to have a designer point to a picture instead of saying "you know, the gobo with the wavy lines."
My current folder is 1.6Gb's worth of junk I've collected since about 1994, and includes things not available on manufacturers' sites, such as the original VL Series200 DMX modes, MicroVisonFX manual, and http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/...016004-nec-code-applicability-100-loading.pdf.
If you know you will be working with a new piece of gear, download the manual to have available should you (or someone else) need it. I believe this has been stressed in Brad Schiller's Console Programming articles in PLSN and also in his book, Amazon.com: The Automated Lighting Programmer's Handbook: Brad Schiller: Books.
As a lighting programmer, I used to carry a looseleaf binder with pertinent information, but it quickly grew unwieldy. I still will print out a gobo sheet for applicable fixtures, as it's so much easier to have a designer point to a picture instead of saying "you know, the gobo with the wavy lines."