Personally I'm not bothered so much by the problems with the Laser printers
and non HP printers in general needing another product to work. My complaint
is that our system line printers are going off of support and HP tells me
there replacement is the LPQ series, and the serial interface isn't going to
drive the printer at it's rated speed so you need to hang it on the network.
I get the printer in and it doesn't work worth a #@%$&@.

I took a quick look at ESPUL very quickly... looks like a good product. I
actually don't mind paying for it but I just don't have the resources to put
it into production. Our backs are to the wall with Y2K looming and several
other related projects, I don't have time to retrain everybody that uses
these printers.  Then I've got to train people to use one set of commands on
one type of printer and another set of commands on other printers. Okay
maybe I could move all of the printers to ESPUL, but that's going to take
time I don't have right now. If ESPUL or the like could hook into the
standard spooler commands for the basics it would make my life sooooo much
easier.

All I want is not to lose functionality when I'm forced to replace hardware.

Is that to much to ask?

I don't mind losing HPIB printers, but I need a replacement that works!

-Lane