But I don't want two sided printing....

Jim,

I couldn't agree with you more.  Only thing I missed in your article is how to turn off the same feature in the latest Adobe PDF as I am stuck with this problem.

Bob Hurter
Ottawa, Canada

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Thanks – I wondered why the last document or two I printed from Adobe was double sided.

If I want to print double sided (bringing along a printed version) I know how to do it.  Preference is for single sided!

Neale Fletterly

West Chester, Ohio

USA

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In our quiz last week, we asked, "Do you find it offensive for one industry to decide how another industry's products are to be used?"

Answers:

They are selling a product too. If they are able improve sales for their product by marketing a "green" feature and that is bad for another industry... well then, so be it.

But I do get upset when government decides things that should be my choice.....like light bulbs!! I can envision a meeting at Lexmark where a young, green (as in environmental) MBA gets a star on his nametag for suggesting the idea.

And especially when the first industry adds CMY to black in low or mid-level quality so that the color cartridges get depleted even when you do not print any color.

No.  Any industry can just advise users in larger public interest about better ways to use a product.

I think you are leading the witness in the way the question is phrased. I do agree that every printer I have used, that is capable of duplex printing, makes it more difficult than necessary to select either single or double-sided by default.

If you don't like it, buy something else. You’re like that guy, Schiff, in Brooklyn complaining he can't get by on $350M/year.

I also find the "Please consider the environment before printing this email . . ." to be offensive and ill-informed - especially when it comes from a paper chemicals supplier. I point this out in my email reply.

Your normal position is "Free Trade". The printer companies should be free to market and position their products as they see fit. It will play out in normal free trade. I like you dislike 2-sided printing but more for aesthetic reasons than truly driving volume of paper sales. I believe it will backfire on the printer makers to force their enviro views on their customers...but if that is how they want to market themselves, it is on them.

Our follow-on question was: "What would you do in this situation?"

Answers:

I would have been more diplomatic with the customer service representative who is serving me. I would also suggest they add disabling the feature to their supporting documentation.

Stop buying the company's products

Work through the instructions/on line set up to change the settings.

Call 'em up and raise Hell!!!

I don't go on-line very often because the boiler plate text that comes back irritates the heck out of me. They probably have them coded like Alt+h = "hello, thank you for contacting us so we can make you think you are happy with our product that doesn't work the way we told you it would". Even the Indian/Pakistani accent comes through the text!!!...or is that my imagination. I have more success Googling key words and finding some geek that has proudly posted a solution to the problem.

I would call and give them a thrashing! And then try to find the email address to someone in a position to actually enact a change.

I'd figure out how to get a message to two or three of the company's executives, including the president or CEO telling them what I don't like. I have a pretty good response rate too. And I might feature it in my monthly column if it appropriate for that medium.

Turn it off and keep it off.

I will take the advice positively

Usually I agree with you, but on this issue I am at 180 degrees: I prefer nearly 100% of the documents I print to be double-sided, and I'm frustrated that so many people have not bothered to set their printers for duplex. I prefer to have to handle, staple and file as few pages as possible. Among other things it keeps down the weight and size of files. Admittedly this is becoming a smaller issue as more and more can be used and saved electronically. And yes, I am in the paper industry. If I was told I had to use at least XXX number of sheets/year, I would rather buy twice as much, print double sided, and recycle the other (unprinted) half. I probably make up the difference by using way too many napkins and paper towels in public places.

There really are greater challenges.

This is just one of a many examples of business forcing a political bias on me - somewhere the political left force me towards their ideology, others where the political right force me towards their ideology. Generally there are too many to deal with so we just take it.

Essentially the same thing you did.

Raise the price of paper to the OEM's...as the value of each sheet has incrementally increased by their defined usage mode.

I would have gotten irritated, but would most likely not have taken it out on the guy in Indonesia that is just trying to do his job. But then, nothing would get done about it on Lexmark's side.

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