I generally agree, though I personally stopped caring and learned to love my non-Duplex Brother.

We've all been conditioned to believe the bullshit about saving the trees, despite the reality being, paper manufacturing is very efficient and mostly uses its own specially-grown trees these days; plus, a typical office worker in a bank will print more paper a day than you'll use in a year. Point being, you aren't killing the planet by printing one-sided vs. duplex. The use of ink or toner is the same.

So I don't mind anymore. I do occasional manual duplexing for convenience or out of courtesy (e.g. when printing contracts), otherwise I print single-sided, and keep the prints around after they've served their purpose. I have a small stack of one-sided prints which find their second life as source paper for further non-critical prints, or as drawing paper for my daughter.

Ah, makes sense – I am just now becoming aware of the fact that practically speaking, I print duplex only because it … reads nicer? The printed product is lighter and smaller and easier to staple, and feels like a book. For me the effect is like a “cleaner workspace” for reading.

I’m sure this varies between people. (Incidentally, it seems that individual variety is most clearly represented in abstract activity. As an example, we all learn mathematics in our individual way. And reading is highly abstract! And what matters for reading efficiency probably varies a great deal from person to person.)

To be clear - I find duplex prints more convenient to handle too :). If I were in a market for a new printer, I'd go for duplex now. But I have a perfectly fine Brother laser printer, and it turns out that single-sided prints are not big enough of an issue to me to justify the effort of selling it and getting a new one.