Manual Duplexing w/Mac not an option...

Am I alone in being tired of transferring my print jobs to my PC only so that I can manual duplex? There are a few threads on here asking the same question, but no one has ever answered it. I am running 10.6.4 with Office 08 and a Brother MFC-8460N. I have all of the updated drivers and firmware available currently but still no luck.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

That's definitely a function of the driver. I've never tried to do it before, so I took a look at my settings.

On my LaserJet 1300, it's an option, but it's grayed out.

On my Photosmart C6350, it's an option, but again it's grayed out.

Astounded, I switched over to Windows, running in a VM, using the latest drivers. Sure enough I can do it.

So, I did a bit of Googling and here's what I found:

Manual duplex printing with OSX presets

Tell me if that helps at all. (but again, I don't understand why this isn't being built into the OS X drivers -- well, it's there, but it appears to be disabled).

Another interesting article - this time using Automator:

Manual Duplex printing for Mac (and/or Linux) - Super User

Read down a bit.

Thanks a bunch! I am going to check those out. My two-sided option is grayed out as well. It's silly, but I've spent more time trying to hunt down a fix for this than it would've taken to transfer all of my work for the next year to the PC which does this easily.

Yeah, it really is dumbfounding. It's kind of funny considering the history of the Mac, but I really think printing in general is one of the only deficiencies of OS X. If you think this is rough, try using a USB print server for a printer that doesn't have a generic Gutenprint driver. On Windows, it's just a matter of switching ports in the Ports tab of the printer properties. On OS X, you'll have to hunt down a driver that doesn't care about how the printer is physically connected. Sometimes it's just not possible... but I digress.

With each major revision, I keep hoping Apple will put some real effort into the printing subsystems, but I'm still waiting.

I know, it's really is kind of amazing that Mac doesn't put more thought into their print capabilities. I have two Mac laptops running in my house (one MBP 10.6.4, and a G4 Powerbook on 10.4) wirelessly with the PC desktop (old dinosaur but still works fine) the only unit on a wired connection to the router. A lot of times I cannot print at all from my MBP if I am in my living room, but have to actually move into my office to get the printer to come to life. The older Powerbook can print from the kitchen with no problems every time. All the while both have a full complement of bars on the Airport card. Go figure.