A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
No, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Word retains (some) settings in the Print dialog (notably the choice of an active printer and its properties) during a given Word session, but restarting Word resets everything to the Windows defaults. I've been using Word since Word for Windows 2.0, and this has always been the case.
No...you are mistaken. I was always able to set the setting to print one side...close the document and open the document and that setting was still set to print one side. Can't do that anymore and it is a pain in the neck.