crash occurs when selecting print,pdf as well?

Crashes? All of OS X or OS X Server is crashing, or is the PDF printing crashing? Any crashdump shown?

Are there any relevent errors in the console log? (Applications > Utilities > Console.app). That'll show a number of scary-looking errors; it's anything that gets logged when you trigger the PDF printing error.

As a guess, this could possibly be a disk error or a corruption underneath the files involved with printing. Could be a hardware error.

Get a backup of your disk to an external disk, if you don't have one available.

As a potential fix (if this is a corruption or a disk error), try reloading the most recent combo update — the combo update, and not the delta — for whatever OS X or OS X Server version you're running, and see if that clears up the error.

If there's a more persistent error here, this could require either a wholesale reinstallation or a hardware repair.

Do you have a local Apple Store or somebody locally that can assist you with this system?

Your Mac is easily old enough to be encountering hardware problems with your disks. Old disks can and do fail, and your Mac is probably at least eight years old; more than old enough to be seeing disk failures. I'd get a backup or two of your disk made onto external disks, and then look to upgrade and patch as described in this reply and in the earlier reply. Preserve your data. That disk-to-disk backup can be created with Disk Utility, or with whatever backup tool(s) you're using.

Once you have your external backup(s), Disk Utility has a repair function, which becomes available once you verify the disk. If the online disk repair can't complete the repairs, then Disk Utility will tell you that you that you need to shut down and boot your installer DVD and use the version of Disk Utility available from the installer's Utilities menu; that's the second screen of the installer, IIRC. (It's been several years since I've run 10.4, so I'm not entirely certain about that. You do NOT want to commence the software installation that's available with that DVD. That would be bad.)

After the repair, use Software Update ( > Software Update...) and upgrade to OS X 10.4.11; to the most current 10.4 version. That might resolve this, if it's an isolated corruption. (If the disk is failing, well, the disk is failing.)

As a guess, you're probably also headed toward needing some local help, and a hardware swap or hardware upgrade, too.

OS X 10.4 is also known as Tiger and the OS X 10.4.1 release is almost eight years old, and that particular OS X version also means your Mac system is based on a PPC processor and not on an Intel processor.

PPC-based hardware cannot be upgraded past version 10.5; past Leopard. Snow Leopard 10.6 does not support PPC systems.

I'd suggest starting a new and seperate thread for your "which printer" question, and with some indication of your printing requirements (color, duplex, network, speed, resolution, startup time, etc) and of your budget.

Pending that posting...

Since this is the server forum, and given I run servers...

I prefer to avoid host-based printing.

My general printing preferences lean toward what are classically called departmental printers. These printers preferably with printer-rendered rather than host-rendering, duplex-capable, and network-connected printers.

If you need scanning or fax, there are multi-function printers around.

I also prefer to use printers that do not require software to be installed on the host.

These definitely aren't the cheapest printers around, they're usually not small, but I'm running several "battleship-grade" departmental printers that are approaching ten years old, and they're running as well as when they were purchased.

Those little host-connected USB-connected cheap printer-like-product stuff you find at the shops? That stuff was and is entirely disposable.

Whatever printer you pick, look at the replacement cartridge costs, and the likely volume of printing you'll get; the page-printing costs.