He got me to the point where I could print a test page from the print server using the LinkSys utility, but we couldn't get a email or web page to print, and he suggested that it was the non-standard apple print drivers... not the hardware. If you know anything about the gimp-print drivers, please share that with me.;D
With apologies in advance for being slightly OT.... your tech was absolutely right - 3rd party printer drivers on Mac OS X generally don't allow the printer to be attached using any other means than the USB port. They are designed specifically to connect to USB.
Windows gets around this by allowing you to dynamically redirect the port. So the driver doesn't care how the printer is physically attached, it just follows the OS's lead and sends the traffic wherever the OS points. OS X doesn't do this (at all). Fortunately, the Gutenprint/CUPS/GIMP-PRINT drivers, which have been included in OS X since 10.3, are network capable. But that assumes that the open source community has designed a driver that works with your printer. The first step on finding a compatible driver (assuming there's not an exact match in the list), is to look out on
this website. Once you're able to determine a compatible driver, you just manually switch over. But be aware that some special functionality (like paper handling, advanced print modes, etc) will be unavailable.
With that said, I've yet to hear a complaint from anyone running a networked printer through the AirPort Extreme. I don't know what kind of special magic Apple does with their hardware and/or software in that case, but it seems to work around the problem somehow. Either that, or everyone on this board who have tried it have been lucky enough to have a printer that has an associated Gutenprint driver.
It was my hope that Apple would address this major deficit in Leopard, but it still appears to be a problem. Let's hope they don't turn a blind eye to it again for the next version.
For more information about this topic, see
this FAQ.