As you have undoubtedly noticed, telling the OS to print four copies on a line printer causes it to send the output to the printer four times, just like the laser printer.  The only reason you see better performance on a one-page, four-copy report on the line printer is that you are using four-part forms.  If four-part forms are mounted on this printer, then I assume ALL reports sent there require four copies.  In that case, I believe most Laserjet printers can be instructed to print multiple copies.  You could do this by creating an environment file (with TTUTIL) that contained the appropriate escape sequence for this printer.  This solution would be OK for short reports, but not for longer ones, since the collating is a problem (each page is printed multiple times before printing the next page).

If the one-page test is a valid one (i.e., a majority of reports are about one page in length), then the impact printer might actually be the correct choice, but it sounds like the users are choosing an unrealistic example as a way of supporting their resistance to change.
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From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: HP network printing
Date: Friday, August 11, 2000 9:21AM

<<File Attachment: ENVELOPE.TXT>>
  At the start of this year we found the documentation for setting up
network printing (ala npconfig).  This works great except for one
problem.  We (I/S here) are trying to get our users off of line printing
for high volume 8.5/11 printing.  However, I notice that if we send a one
page job to the spool (and say ask for 4 copies).... well looking on the
printer's LCD panel it gets the job
the 1st copy...then seems to wait processes this job AGAIN and prints the
second copy (which is copy #2). It does this for all 4 COPIES.   We had a
user time (*sigh* the laser printer vs the lineprinter):

 1- 4 ply line printer page = 15 secs
 4 laser copies total 32 secs.

  Is there a way to tell the HP to send one job to the printer and to
instruct the PRINTER to copy this 4 times (the latency happens between
the pages as it processes the job)?  Perhaps an ENV file code or even a
NPCONFIG item?
BTW- these are all contemporary HP printers with Jetdirect.