LaserJet P2015dn duplexing on Windows 7

HP LaserJet P2015 models use “Universal” driver under Windows 7. When first installed, duplexing doesn’t work by default. This is a surprise for many who come from Windows XP environment where the dedicated drivers had P2015’s built-in duplexing availability turned on, of course, by default. In Windows 7, however, the duplexing selector for P2015 says by default: “Print on both sides (manually)”.

To enable P2012’s automatic duplexing on Windows 7 go to Devices and Printers, highlight the P2015, right click, and select Printer Properties from the context popup menu. Go to Device Settings tab and look for “Duplex Unit (for 2-Sided Printing)” option. It’s set to “Not Installed” by default. Change it to “Installed” and click on “OK”. Now when you go to Preferences when getting ready to print, the automatic (not “manually”) option is available on the Finishing tab, and automatic duplexing works.

Also if you use the excellent priPrinter utility, P2015 honors the “Double Sided” toggle on the Page Layout tab. Same goes for the “Double-sided” checkbox on FinePrint utility, and other applications that provide the option to turn automatic duplexing on or off.

Windows 7 is *NOT* Windows Vista! (Or is it?)

Hear hear!  I was recently commenting Ballmer’s statement that Windows 7 would “be Vista, just a lot better.” Now it turns out Windows 7 will not be Vista but perhaps—hopefully—an entirely new direction for Windows. InfoWorld writes:

The reworked Windows: tighter, leaner
The operating system itself has gotten a considerable amount of reworking below the presentation layer. If M3 is any indication, that work has led to a tighter OS, and by “tighter” I mean that resource requirements are being lowered.

That’s the right direction! Microsoft should stop calling Windows 7 the “Vista 2.0!”

Update 29 October 2008: Or that would be the right direction. Randall Kennedy’s review of the first beta of Windows 7 doesn’t sound promising. Hopefully Microsoft has still a very long to-do list. They’d have the time, but do they have the focus? Otherwise Ubuntu, or perhaps PC-BSD look ever more enticing.

“Windows 7 is Vista.” Really?

I see Microsoft has already started to lay down the groundwork for the failure of Windows 7 (Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just ‘a lot better’, InfoWorld). Saying something like that at this point in time should work about as well as if John McCain were to declare that “he is George W. Bush, just a lot better.” People don’t like Vista as there is very little apparent gain from it (as compared to XP), and if Windows 7 is Vista 2.0 it must mean that large number of Vista’s obnoxioius features will still present in Windows 7.

When Windows NT came out its benefits were obvious over Windows 98. Subsequently Windows 2000 took out the rough edges off of NT making the new environment very useable, and lightyears ahead of 98 in stability, features, etc. XP further refined that lineage. Vista, on the other hand, has no such apparent benefits over XP. Even though Microsoft has put significant amount of time into developing the kernel under the hood, to the users it looks more bloated, more resource-hungry, more glitsy, but with few features that leave the user wanting to switch over (DirectX 10 being perhaps one of the only ones.. and if you don’t play games, even it has little significance to you). Obviously Windows 7 continues the lineage, but just as John McCain is desperately trying to point out that he is not George W. Bush, Microsoft would be well advised to play down the likeness of Windows 7 to Vista.

Rather than advertising Windows 7’s already painfully obvious lineage, Microsoft could, for a change, attempt something revolutionary such as making the new version of the Windows actually less resource hungry so that it would run faster on the same hardware as its predecessor. With many UNIX distributions such as FreeBSD that is generally the case; new versions squeeze more torque out of the same hardware than did their predecessors.