HP 4250DTN and windows server 2008 R2, slow printing

Question

ok, so here is my deal,
majority of my printers are HP 4250DTN, some 4650's and 4700's
i have tried probably every driver from universal to PCL (5e, 6), PS, all possible combinations and still running
into the same issue when trying to print over the network,
i have two Windows 2008 R2 servers in cluster setup as File/Print server,
clients are Windows XP Pro, couple Win7 Pro or Ent.
In either case when i try to install a network printer on a client computer i can install it but managing and printing
is a looooong process, if i just hit print button (in word, adobe,...) it takes about 2 minutes to print the page,
if i want to change any printing properties it takes forever to get anywhere.
i've tried this with all available different printer drivers
(HP Universal works fast but i can not use this driver in my environment because we use customized tray and paper setting and this driver does NOT allow me to customize these),
i am assuming it has to be something with printer drivers, because i am still running old 2003 servers as file/print cluster on two different servers
and when installing a printer through that it prints immediately as it should, no matter if i am on Win7 or WinXP client.
I am trying to migrate everything to new 2008 file print cluster but with this issue i am at the stand still right now.
any help much appreciated.
Thank you

Answer 1

I have Windows 2003 servers with the Universal PCL6 driver v5,4.  It printed slower then the previous version.  I manually changed the Device Settings, mainly the Monochrome / Color option.  This seemed to make the print process faster.