Vista - Slow Printer in Vista

Lexmark X3350 (All In One). First installed on a Windows XP machine. No
problems. Bought a new computer with Vista (yucka) and now I have issues
with the printer. When I go to print a Word doc. or anything else for that
matter, it (the printer software/driver) tries to acess the internet
(firewall tells me so). It never did that in XP. I thought I might have
selected to share the printer on the inital set up, so I compleatly
uninstalled; reinstalled the software (from lexmark support site) plugged the
printer back in and tried to print...it still acesses the internet...prints
extremly slow and I am unable to change the properties on the printer (ie.
change it to quick print). I went to the lexmark support site and they say
that firewalls and anti virus software are "known problems" in printer speed
and that I should turn off these two items any time I want to print a
document (seems stupid to me). The bottom line is...why cant the printer
just print the document without acessing the internet? Its almost as if the
usb cable is useless.
I'm getting to the point where the printer is useless to me as well. Who
wants to wait two minutes to have the first page of a document 'begin' to
print?

Have the same problem with lexmark X2550. Goodness knows why the printer
tries to access the internet.... Lexmark tried telling me to disable the
programs under firewalls (though the support person's english was totally
meaningless to me!) I think there is a real and significant problem with the
lexmark and Vista drivers. The same printer works fine under XP. The same
Vista laptop prints to a cannon printer with no trouble. Sadly no-one seems
to be comming up with a solution to this problem

"siphoto" wrote:

Hmmmm this problem still exists and from my googling it appears to be
no nearer a solution!

My Lexmark X2550 is still pants on Vista (though works fine on XP).
Lexmark tech support have given up on the issue (they still see no
problem).

From my researches to date, clearly the Lexmark driver is trying to go
over the net for some unknown reason, and then getting confused before
it finally prints.

Two more clues for anyone who knows about these things....

There is a hint on the Lexmark support site advising that problems
installing the Lexmark Imaging Studio software (utilities to drive the
printer, set scan properties, edit images etc.) can be fixed by
installing the correct version of .net 2

The second clue is that I get imaging studio to work fine on my XP
laptop - I am able to invoke scanning from the PC, change settings
etc. BUT if I fire up a secure VPN from my laptop to a remote
system.... effectively shutting off any other network connections from
the machine..... then I am no longer able to invoke scans etc. from
imaging studio - the software tells me that the network printer is not
available (or some such). Bizarrely, though, if I hit the "scan"
button on the printer, it is able to push the image onto my laptop.

I am just amazed that Lexmark remain in business as Vista becomes more
prevalent!