I am with juiceme and qwazix. The first time I encountered the strange phenomenon of video tutorials was when I needed to disassemble one netbook. The only tutorial I found was video - and I hated it! The whole point of a tutorial is not reading or watching but doing! You refer to step 1, do it, refer to step 2, do it... A video makes that so much more difficult.

And you can't print it either!

Exactly, the drawbacks of video IMHO are that it is hard to get to your pace, (start/stop/go back a bit) not searchable (try to find the correct place in a 4hour long strip, with teeny-weeny preview window), not indexable, not printable, cannot be taken anywhere with you like a printed manual....

I agree with @gerbick & co that some people might learn by watching but at least I learn better by doing&interacting than watching&listening.
(at school that must have been a constant annoyance to other students as I had to challenge theachers at every turn... I feel a bit let down on any lecture that I cannot voice my questions&opinions on...)

Hey. I'm Co

Add me to juiceme's & co. list.
The additional irritating point is that currently if I google for some "XYZ tutorial" the first hits are often videos.

lol, yeah, but I still hate them :-P

btw, non printable might actually be an advantage
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

Ran into this issue while learning about using wikis in Sharepoint. What I was looking for was a text tutorial with *screenshots*. I had to settle for a video tutorial. Skip the first minute, blah blah who am I, why this tutorial exists, what we hope to accomplish today, snore. fast forward while the guy blabs on in a slow pace to make sure people understand and then of course speed up during the most critical part (what button did you push again?) rewind, replay, repeat. A blog with some well chosen screenshots would have saved me a good 15 minutes of frustration.

Sometimes the language are difficult for some people. So a video tutorial is always handy for (very) n00bs