Manuals on CD - are they worth it?

I like hard copies of instruction books. CD drives and me don't get along. Much easier to write notes and cross reference notations on paper copies than on CDs.
Also, older computers may not have CD capability, or have the incorrect format.
And, what do you do if your away from the shop with a tractor stuck in the fields, and the laptop's battery has gone south?
It's nice to have the basic printed instruction book with you.

Ya, right!

(manual to memory = overload, undefined interger, or file not found)

in my case, all 3