How to waste paper in four easy steps

I've been meaning to blog about this for ages, because it bugs me every time I print anything, but I just never seemed to get round to it. And in many ways, this is a silly time to do it, as I've had a migraine all morning and I should be working. Ah well, that's procrastination for you. It's a fickle mistress, as they say.

Anyway. The printer that came with my laptop has a nice shiny feature to make double-sided printing really easy. Which is nice. All you have to do is click "I Want To... print on both sides of the paper", and it sorts it all out for you. All you have to do is reload the paper half way through to print on the other side.

This brings me on to my one gripe with this otherwise lovely feature. Maybe it's just me and my tree-hugging ways, but surely the reason most people want to print on both sides of the paper is because it, well, saves paper? It's so obvious it doesn't really need stating. So why, in God's name, does it assume that unless you explicitly un-tick the box, you want it to 'print instruction page to assist in reloading'? I mean, I can understand that working out which way the paper has to go back in might be tricky. But anyone who has problems on that front is very well provided for by the helpful little dialogue box that pops up on the screen showing you exactly how to reload the paper. Now, I don't know what the instruction page says, because I've never printed it, but I can't imagine it says anything substantially different from what's already on the screen. So why is it there, other than because it would be quite nicely ironic if it wasn't so bloody annoying? Why??