"I think thats what forums are for... the person needing help has already checked the manuals"

Unfortunately, that is very often not the case. :-(
It is often abundantly clear that the questioner has not read the manuals - nor even bothered to look at the vendor's website or search the forum before asking a basic question.

As Craig said recently,
"Believe me, it is very obvious to everyone who reads the forum how much time any given poster has spent trying to solve the problem himself."
http://www.8052.com/forum/read.phtml?id=22980&top=

Yes, there are plenty of cases where manuals are incomplete, unhelpful, unclear, or even incorrect and I'll be sure to identify where that's the case; eg,
http://www.keil.com/discuss/docs/thread1530.htm