printer hell

[baza]

OK, I love Ubuntu. Have done since I was first told about it at a LUG in
Birmingham (uk). BUT

I just can't get the darn thing to work with any of my printers. The
Lexmark comes as no real surprise as it's always been a sod under Linux.
But I also can't get my HP Desk Jet 500c to work. This is odd as it's
worked fine with Suse, Mandrake, Fedora.

It's set up, but when I send a job to it, it grabs the paper from the
tray, but stops, pauses for ages, then prints a line of garbage every
minute or so.

Some one out there has got a printer working... how??


Barry