Print Both Sides Now

Q. How do I print a document using both sides of the paper?

Peter Hess, Los Angeles

A. That's called duplex printing, and it's easiest with a duplex-capable printer. To see if yours qualifies, click File, Print in any application, select your printer, choose the Properties button, and look for a duplex option.

If your printer lacks duplexing, perhaps your application supports manual duplex printing, in which you print the odd pages, put the paper back in the printer reversed, and then print the even pages. Microsoft Word's Print dialog box, for instance, has such an option.

If your application doesn't duplex, convert your document to a PDF file and print it with Adobe's Acrobat Reader, which supports duplex printing. You'll have to download and install two free programs: GPL Ghostscript and CutePDF Writer. CutePDF (which requires Ghostscript) is a print driver that converts anything you "print" to it into a PDF file.

Once you've created the PDF and loaded it into Acrobat Reader, select File, Print, and in the Print dialog box's 'Subset' drop-down menu, select the Odd pages only and Even pages only options consecutively for manual duplex printing.

Bring up a Quick Report on All Your Drivers

It's 10 p.m.: Do you know what drivers are running on your PC, and what starts them running? Windows' Device Manager provides full info on a particular driver, but this isn't helpful if you want an overview of all of them. In Windows XP Pro and Vista, it's easy to view details on all of your drivers, running and not: Select Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, Command Prompt. At the prompt, type driverquery /v /fo csv > dr.csv and press <Enter>. When the prompt returns, type dr.csv and again press <Enter>. The report will open in Microsoft Excel (or the program you've set as your default spreadsheet).

Send your questions to answer@pcworld.com. Answer Line pays $50 for published items. You'll find Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector's humorous and other writings at www.thelinkinspector.com.