E-book refering to mcad files NOT in installation directory?

You can open an e-book/handbook no matter where it is stored at (Help/E-books/Open Book...).

There is no option to change the default handbook directory, though.

The readme says "Contact technical support if you want to point to those E-books in an alternative location." .

Mathcad will always look in the default handbook directory under the installation dir for handbooks, but you can add additional handbook directories by adding some registry entries. Be careful when you modify the registry and be sure to make a backup before fiddling around there.

Go to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mathsoft\Mathcad 14\HandbookPath]. Usually there is only one empty string there (standard). To add, lets say, two additional directories you want Mathcad to look at for E-Books, you have to add three string values here:

name "Number" with the value "2" (yes, its a string, not a DWORD)

name "0" with the value "D:\path_to_alternate_HB_dir"

name "1" with the value "S:\shared_network_dir\MCHandbook"

WIthout the quotes - of course you would put the real paths there and don't put a backslash at the end of the paths.

Now Mathcad looks at three locations for handbooks and all of them are presented in the help menu for easy selection.