Is there an advantage of one over the other to connect a printer using parallel or usb? Mine supports both. Bluejay

usb is faster

Thanks, That's how I have it hooked up. It is an older printer that I had at home and I brought it to work to use after my other one bit the dust,and until the one I want is back in stock . That's when I noticed it supported both connections. Learn something every day here. Bluejay

I doubt you would notice any difference in speed. The bottleneck in printer speed is the printer itself and not the way it receives the data.

But USB is probably going to be easier to set up. Also, with nothing hooked up to the parallel port you can disable it in cmos/bios setup and free up those resources.

Yup, as far as speed is concerned, there wouldn't be any difference. Printers are incredibly slow.

Using parallel to connect a printer keeps a USB port free for another device.

bill said
Using parallel to connect a printer keeps a USB port free for another device.

thats why in theory with the aid of usb hubs usb supports up to 137 devices

It's not like there need be any shortage of USB ports. If you need more yeah, add a hub or at least another card. It's easier for windows to work with multiple USB devices than multiple parallel devices. That's why I think being able to disable the parallel port is more helpful.
For example, it's usually easier to set up a sound card when the parallel port is disabled.