Double sided printing

At work I use Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and a networked printer that's capable of doing double-sided (or duplex) printing. Yet it surprises me to see just how many people print off documents without using this handy paper saving feature.

I asked a few people why they don't use it and found out that they're aware of the capability to do double-sided printing but they usually forget to select it.

However, you can set your printer to always print duplex by default. Here's how on Windows 2000 Professional with a networked Konica IP-431 PostScript printer. The instructions should be pretty much the same on most Windows platforms, but if you know better, please let me know by adding a comment to this post. I'd also be grateful for instructions on how to achieve this on non-Windows platforms.

So here goes...

Select the "Start" button from the toolbar, then Settings, then Printers.
Right click on your default printer (the icon should have a white tick on a black background next to it) and select Properties.
Now this bit probably differs from printer to printer, but hopefully not by much...
Click on the Printing Preferences button and from the "Print on Both Sides (Duplex)" box select either "Flip on long edge" or "Flip on short edge". Flip on long edge is usually suitable for documents with a Portrait orientation, whilst flip on short edge is suitable for Landscape orientation.

Give it a go, and if you work in a busy place with a frequently used duplex printer why not put up a simple poster explaining how to print double-sided by the printer. Better still, ask your company to put the details up on the corporate intranet site if they have one.

Happy printing!
caldini