I work with a lot of consumer electronics companies. I also buy their products. On principle alone, I refuse to read manuals - at least until I've fiddled around with the product for a while. After I've got the product up and working, I promptly discard of any manuals, documentation, or other important papers that came with my new gizmo. (Warranty cards, receipts, etc.)
When I do need the manuals, I download them from the product web site. However, I have started to wonder why more enterprises don't make their manuals into Wikis. Manuals are nice and so are discussion forums, but each have their own purpose.
The value of creating Wikis instead of regular online manuals is that they can updated by the product users. The reduces the need to hunt down tips and tricks in discussion forums. Invariably, in large forum environments, the discussion threads can be quite long and involved. Wikis are often well edited, short and concise, which is exactly how I like my directions.
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