All Data

True, there is something that is called "book time" - where a particular job "should" be completed within a certain amount of time, but there is nothing to actually compel the mechanic to follow it. Usually it comes into play for warranty work, when you call around for quotes on jobs. Labor costs is a different story - that hourly rate is driven by the market - ie, an hour of flat labor at an independent could be significantly different than a flat hour at a dealership.

As for that information - depends on the shop and what vehicles they specialize in. Most of that information is likely kept on a distributed intranet - sourced from any number of possible hosts. Some Toyota specific shops use TIS, some use something else, some even go back to hard copies on jobs.

ALL DATA or other online subscription services - depends on you. Something like TIS might be more useful, if you have the equipment (Techstream) to make use of it and looking for Toyota specific information.

Myself, I have used subscription services, but not those particular ones. The ones I have access, or used to have access, were tied to the shop's intranet. Don't think there was a end user variant available - just to commercial entities. I wouldn't be surprised if they were very similar to ALL DATA or TIS - as these have services for end users as well as commercial, but don't know off the top of my head if that is truly the case.

Correct. Some of these subscriptions are commercial/professional release only, cannot get them as an end user. I still prefer the FSM and printed volumes of Chilton's or Haynes manuals. Those repair manuals get you most of the way through a repair - whatever information you are missing can usually be filled in by quick web search.

As for ALLDATA reviews - I believe there was a poster on here that used ALLDATA, but don't remember which poster - it was some time ago. On some other forums, some have mentioned Identifix as a possible solution, but I think it is mid-range priced - something like $120-$160 year. But it did have snippets of the FSM with the service. Might not get the whole FSM, but you get a decent amount to start with.

Also keep in mind there are different 'levels' within those services. Example, shops will have access to Motor ALLDATA that end users will not see on their version of DIY ALLDATA. Same with Mitchell - the end user Mitchell, I've heard, is a nightmare to use (like a convoluted search engine) - but if you see the Shop Setup PRO variant. Mitchell now, since being acquired by Snap-On, is hit or miss. Some love it - some hate it.

Identifix and Snap-On's ShopKey/ShopKeyPro are other services that some people said they liked. Identifix may not be as in-depth as ALLDATA or Mitchell, but some like its "direct-hit" feature of targeting a known issue with known fixes. I'll add a caveat that with not all fixes are correct, as some have found out the hard (expensive) way.

Not sure you can even get a subscription to the professional variation of ALLDATA, just the DIY version which is limited to a single vehicle only. Additional vehicles are up-charged on a per vehicle cost on the subscription.

All that said, ALLDATA is probably the best value out of the bunch. The others can be very pricy - some are hundreds of dollars per month! Unfortunately, the really sad part is that no single subscription is a perfect solution. ALLDATA might have 80% of what you need, but you might have to go to a FSM and Mitchell to get the other 20%. Mitchell is known to have great wiring diagrams, but the rest can be hard to use.

And to confuse you even more, another way of looking at it - you could spend just $20-$25 on a Chilton's manual and get about 90% of the coverage of any of those base services. There are some things on the car, that people shouldn't attempt to DIY - most of those are not covered in these sort of DIY repair manuals. So looking at it from this perspective, hard to beat the cost of a Chilton's or Haynes repair manual.

Probably pretty close, if not exactly like the FSM that Toyota puts out. Sometimes you'll find extra information on the TIS site, sometimes less.

Not sure what you mean by how hard it is to download these manuals? You mean how to get them off the phone? Depends on your phone and what computer you have. Probably easiest to just setup a dropbox account on your home machine and download the files from that. Assuming that they are in a PDF format.

OK, still not quite understanding what you need - sounded like your buddy already uploaded his copies on your Dropbox account.

As for you getting your own subscription and trying to download the manuals - you'll have to try and find out yourself. I have no idea what sort of computer setup you have, what sort of bandwidth you have, and what you consider easy to download.

As stated on the TIS info site, most of the information is available as PDFs, so you'll have to make sure you can download / view them on your machine.

You can also check and see if they have the information you are looking for your model. https://techinfo.toyota.com - go to more info link, pick Toyota TIS library, click the appropriate model year, and note if they have the information you need for your model.

OK, I got you now.

Yeah, the PDFs are broken into multiple sections - you can batch download those (just search online for those), but some might find it easier to just download each link, especially if your connection is fast enough. Be a lot of PDFs, probably hundreds - if you downloaded everything they had (repair manuals, operator manual, TSBs, etc.)

I've gotten the service bulletins and backups of the operator's manual that way - but I had the luxury of downloading them whenever I wanted to (shop system). But you should be able to get what you need in that two day subscription - just sign up and start downloading.