AppleWorks 6.2.9 on OSX 10.4.6 imbedded images print VERY badly

Question

Ever since my upgrade from an older version (don't remember which) of AppleWorks on OSX 10.2.x - in that arrangement all was well, now with AW 6.2.9 and OSX 10.4.6 every image I import by any means into an AW document of any type zooms on the screen just fine, very detailed, but prints VERY badly.
"Very badly" can be defined as, any text which is part of the image is blocky and becomes almost unreadable; all elements of the image blur at every edge - basically, look at a picture through an unfocused lens and you'll get the idea.
Any other application prints crystal clear using the same image files that AW messes up. I used to use AW to make my business letterhead, business cards, logos, media labels, etc. Now I'm doing all that by coding directly in PostScript because AW won't print nice copy.
I've been trying to find any settings in AW prefs regarding aliasing, smoothing, dithering, you name it, and nothing I've tried makes any difference.
Any ideas where to go to tell AW to play nice with the printer like it's ancestors used to?
Again, EVERY other application prints perfectly, so the printer, driver, cabling, etc cannot be the issue. Only when (and everytime) AW gets involved does printing get munged.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer me.
iBook x 2 = G4 + G3   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   lots of pro audio packages....

Answer 1

Thanks to all who answered.
I'm thinking it would have been nice of Apple to let us know that they were going to change something as wide-ranging as how images are imported into AW documents. As was mentioned by Yvan, the 72dpi limit was apparently introduced with AW6. Thanks for the clarification, also. I suspected that the OS (10.4.6 for me) and drivers were clean; since every other app I have prints perfectly. The very same files used to import into AW(older) and print fine just as they were on the older system.
Peggy, yes, most of the images in question were .tiff and .jpg formats, usually from a scan or a conversion from a .ps or .eps into a .jpg or .tiff.
Not being a graphic or visual guy (audio yes, but not graphics...), I had no idea what most of the plethora of image types offered by the "save as..." dialog were about, and had no time to try them all one by one. PICT format is fairly deep into the list, so it would've taken me a while to explore the possibilities that far.
But thank you Peggy, using Preview to convert to PICT format lets me import the images I need and prints them acceptably. I still think raw Postscript is a bit cleaner yet, but for most of my needs the conversion to PICT is so far solving the problem. And if anyone wonders, yes I really do code stuff by hand directly in Postscript. And Perl, and C, and Prolog, and.... So good of OSX to include my favorite editor, emacs! (Old Unix admins never die - we just spawn child processes...or fork and exec - take your pick!
Hope, interesting that your Intel-based machine had such a problem from the start. Even more interesting that a reload fixed it. Curious what may have been/not been installed in the original factory load.... Glad I'm still on PowerPC architecture - time-tested base of reliability there.
I did look at the tip from Sharon Joiner (linked by Yvan), but compared to Peggy's suggestion, Sharon's tip seems a bit more involved than it needs to be - at least for my needs.
Again, thank you to everyone.