I've found groups.google.com (former dejanews) to be the best resource for finding that which ain't in manuals. I'm surprised how often it works.

I was using Pagemaker (the absolute all time worst program I've ever tried to use, now use Quark) and found that bitmaps with transparent backgrounds, even tho the manual said they should be transparent, aren't in PM documents. Adobe support had no idea what to do (they never do). I used groups.google.com and found a post from 4 years earlier that said if one rotates the graphic from 0 (0.1 degree is enough), the transparent background works.

Information superhighway my ass. More like information super landfill. What you want is probably there, but it takes a lot of digging through rubbish to find it. And like a landfill, you're probably gonna find a lot of interesting things along the way that you don't need. I was looking for three phase chopper controllers (I didn't want something as complicated as a veriable frequency drive) and one of the first hits was about a device called a chopper that's in sirens. unfortunately, I spent the next six hours reading about air raid and fire sirens. Really interesting stuff. I didn't find the 3 phase chopper I was looking for until the next day.