To print server or not to print server

Hello Folks!
I'm setting up a five workstation peer-to-peer network for an architect office. All PCs are Win2K powered. For printing, they have a HP DesignJet 430 plotter and a Canon BJC 5500. The main software application used is AutoCAD.
The question is about whether to use a printer server for accessing the plotter and the printer as network devices, or simply connect them to two of the PCs lpt1 and share them?
Could someone highlight the pros and cons of each options to help make an informed decision?
If a printer hub is the way to go, which one would you recommend in the above scenario?
Any suggestion greatly appreciated!

 

Print server - will run 7x24 and offer any PC access to any printer at any time. And no load on any PC that is not printing. And with 2K PCs, all drivers are loaded only on the print server so updates are easy. 2K will print via the print server's drivers.

If you set up the print server with the OS on C: the pagefile by itself on D: and spooler services, etc. on E: you will see great performance too. (and D/E can be any partitions - just used those for example). And the pagefile partition should be a smidgen over twice as large as the pagefile which IMO should be locked to a set and identical min/max. 512Mb is a nice number for the file so 1.2Gb for the partition. Otherwise you can't defrag the pagefile if you want to. And there is a good M$ Q article on exactly how & why to run the spooler service on a partition other than the system partition.

Local printer shared - will only be available when that PC is running. Will place a load on the printer-host PC when anyone prints (probably not a real issue with a properly equiped 2K PC though). If they do lots of graphic printing (CAD stuff) the performance will be much slower than with a dedicated print server.

Can't help with specifics on the printer hub since all our printers have NICs. However, I think you will want to put the printers on the network rather than connecting them to any PC if you go the print server route.

And (not directly printer related) make sure you are running the PCs from a switch rather than a hub. Serious performance differences between the two. For one thing, the switch will allow network traffic at over 20 times the speed of a hub if you have 100baseTX (100Mbs on UTP cat5 cable) NICs. For another, the logic built into a switch will allow mostly targeted network traffic rather than a bunch of broadcasting.

In fact, with AutoCad, the client might want to consider a fiber network. More expensive but seriously faster performance. 1000Mbs is easy with one of those but looking at the extra cost for the Gigabit switch, fiber NICs and the fiber itself.