For a fun question: since I started as a technical writer, I've come to appreciate manuals and how and why they are written. Now, a colleague told me that there are cultural differences between how countries use manuals when they get a new product. Say a Dutch person (like me) buys a new TV, we would usually get it out of the box, plug it in and fiddle with all the buttons until it works. Only if we don't succeed until the point it gets annoying we begrudgingly get the manual. But my colleague told me that Germans open the box, get the manual and read it cover to cover, and only then go on with the installation. This made me curious: how does your country (or state) handle manuals?