When printing from a Vista computer to a shared computer, you notice the following:

Printing takes a long time to begin.

Opening the Print dialog (e.g. in Word) takes a long time.

Selecting printers in the Print dialog is slow.

The real reason is unknown, but Vista seems to have a problem with excessive querying of the printer. Along with the usual slowdowns of network traffic, this causes serious slowdowns.

The trick is to have Vista believe it is dealing with a local printer, rather than a shared printer. This is done by specifying a Local printer port, pointing to the share, then configure the printer on that port:

Open Printers, and then Server Properties.

Select the Ports tab, an  ...