C309a "Print on both sides" slows printing of 1 page [ Edited ]

[jrsyangl]

I have been trying to track down the cause of painfully slow printing of single page pdf documents on my c309a. The main bottleneck is the time it takes from pressing OK to actually starting to print.. This time goes from 5 to 40 seconds by changing the Print on both sides option from Off to Automatically. I want the default to be Automatically. Does anyone know why it takes so much longer to start to print a single page with automatic double sided printing, and more importantly, how to get around this delay?  TIA

Lou

[jrsyangl]

For anyone who is interested, here is my report of my interaction with HP Support on the issue of slow printing on my C309a.  I have had 6 sessions with 4 different people at different levels over many hours. The lessons learned are:

1) Installing the Deskjet 990C drivers, using Add a Printer,  eliminates the slow printing problem. The downside is that this is a generic print driver with limited options and no scan/fax capabilities; one has to switch to the 309a Printer for those. It is a less than satisfactory get-around, but better than nothing.

2) The last tech person I spoke to acknowledged that the problem was that the 309a driver was bloated and a resource hog after I pointed out that there was no problem with a similarly connected Canon AIO. He offered little hope that the 309a driver for XP systems would be upgraded.  The service (not tech) rep had previously told me that  the only hope for an upgrade was for a lot of 309a/XP users to report their problems to HP. The support number is 800-334-5144.

3) All the HP people I talked to at all levels seemed to be sincerely trying to help. They are just stuck with supporting what at this point is a seriously flawed product.

4) If HP does not fix this, my next printer will not be an HP.

Lou