Laser Printer – How to Perform Manual Duplex Printing

ALMOST, but no cigar yet: the 4th step only gets the odd pages from the 1st step, and then takes the even pages from that set... That's no good. I will delete this some time later, unless I think of something smart. (The 1st step can also be made to create two files right away, but you need the confirmation dialog. Maybe there's some "restart" or parallel processing in Automator.

For a Mac, Automator is your friend:

• Open Automator

• Select "Print Plugin" (Print plugins are workflows that are available in the print dialog. They accept PDF versions of the document being printed. Prior to 10.6 Snow Leopard, you might not get this choice until you're about to save your workflow, rather than when creating an empty workflow. Should work the same.)

• Drag the following items into the workflow to the right:

  1. "Extract Odd & Even Pages", and select "Odd"

  2. "Print Finder Items"

  3. "Ask for confirmation", write some instructions

  4. "Extract Odd & Even Pages", and select "Even"

  5. "Print Finder Items"

• Save it. It will end up in ~/Library/PDF Services/ and hence be part of the PDF menu in the Print dialog.

^{Automator to the rescue}

^{PDF menu in Print dialog}

When the total of pages is odd, you'll have to fiddle a bit with the first or last page of the first run. (If you'd put the whole stack back into the printer, then the last page might be left in the paper tray when you're done. Just try and adjust the instructions in step 3.)

Toner costs much more per purchase than inkjet ink, but each cartridge lasts much longer so per page they are considerably cheaper. Some cheap lasers aimed at the home market do not work out as cheap (sometimes noticeably more expensive than other lasers) per page, but will still beat a 'jet in the long run.

If you do very little printing, then the inkjet will win overall but if you do a moderate amount or more even a cheap laser will work out cheaper in the long run. But if you only do a little printing there is another noticeable factor against inkjets - they tend to gum up if left alone for a couple of weeks so you end us wasting half your ink doing head cleans next time you use it - bringing the cost per page up higher. My last Epson was terrible for this, and it wasn't a cheap grotty model either.

On good photo paper a good inkjet will produce better photo results than a cheap or mid-range laser, often better than an expensive model. But that again brings up the cost considerably, and on normal paper (standard 80gsm/90gsm stock) all but the cheapest lasers will win out these days. And if you plan to print much plain text (letters, documents) again the laser wins (you don't want to use good photo paper to get crisp text from an inkjet when you can get the same text quality on standard stock out of the laser.

There is also the problem of speed. Never trust an inkjet's claimed speed. My last one claimed "up to 20 pages/min" but it couldn't even pass blank paper through at that rate, and its highest speed setting wasn't worth bothering with. That lovely full page photo could take a number of minutes to create - my laser will kick its version out in seconds. I would doubt the pages-per-cart claims of inkjets too, especially for colour output as nth figures are based on colour text not blocks of colour like a chart or photo, much more so than lasers which in my experience get much closer to their rated output per cart.

These days I go with a colour laser, my current one is a Xerox 6125 which I got a good offer on last year (lower price and free toner carts, which brought the effective price below the cheaper units I was considering) and have been very happy with it, and if I want a few more professional quality photo prints I take the files to Boots or Tesco and use their facilities or self-serve printing machines. What I used to do was to have a B/W laser for docs/letters/draft and a colour inkjet for anything that absolutely required colour.

Don't get the cheapest colour lasers as they sometimes have noticeable banding issues in colour output and once you tot up all the consumables (check how long the drums last before needing to be replaced as well as the toner) don't work out a lot cheaper than jets. If you can get print samples of plain text and business graphic (text with relatively flat colour like charts and such) and photo output for any model you consider just to be sure. My Xerox 6125 has decidedly better photo output than my brother's Samsung 310 (though the Samsung's photo output isn't terrible, its basic colour output fine, and b/w output no worse than the Xerox).

Two other points to consider: a laser will be much quieter, but most colour lasers are significantly larger and need more space around them for ventilation.