HP Laser Jet P2055 slow when printing Excel documents or from databases. [ Edited ]

[Rendfest]

I work for a company that is deploying 100s of this model of printer and for some reason Excel documents and print jobs sent from databases print out extremely slowly. It takes 2 to 7 seconds per page depending on what is being printed.

The way we are setup is with a Windows 2008 print server with print queues on it. We use only the HP universal print driver on this particular print server and it is against our standards to install the printers locally. Also all of our printers have been updated to the firmware 20101025

After doing a lot of troubleshooting I found that this appears to happen anytime I use either of the following printer drivers with this printer.

HP Universal Print Driver ver 5.01, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 Both in Windows XP and in Windows 7 and with both PCL 5 and PCL 6.

HP 2055 PCL 6 ver. 61 in Both Windows XP and in Windows 7.

I have also tried connecting the printer locally to see if that helps but I experience the same issues. So far the only work around I have found is to use an older print driver for a down level printer. For example the P2015 and 1320n print drivers appear to work better though there is still a slight delay.

An additional step I tried is leaving the tray open when I send the print job. This appears to force the printer to spool the print job correctly though there is still hesitation it just isn't as pronounced. For example with a 10 page Excel document once I push the tray back in the printer will print 4 pages then pause, print 3 more pages, then pause, then print 2 more pages, pause then print the final page. This has happened with all 5 P2055x printers that I have tested it on.

Please help, we need to get this resolved because this particular printer is the only model we are currently allowed to use. I'm hoping a newer firmware than 20101025 might be on the way?

Ren