Appletalk vs LPD vs IPP vs Jet Direct Socket

I support a mixture of Power Mac G5s and Mac Pros. I've spent years supporting Sun servers and workstations but am pretty new to Mac. Recently we began having problems with AppleTalk and decided to move to IP printing. From all I've read I think I should ignore LPD and use either IPP or the Jet Direct Socket. I'm unclear on the pros and cons of either of these and have been having little luck finding good reading material to gain a better understanding. One thing I've noticed is that it seems the printers don't send error messages such as paper out etc. using either IPP or Jet Direct as they used to do with AppleTalk. Is this normal? I have a mixture of HP 8150N and HP5500 printers. Thanks in advance.....Lawrence