ahoy astrosteven...
sorry for the late reply, wife left the macbook plugged in on the bed covered with heavy blankets... so the hard drive died (from the heat i suppose). just got the repaired hd from apple.
as for configuring the printer, i used the oft-discussed "option" click when clicking the "More Printers..." button in printer setup utility. then, i go to advanced, select "Windows Printer via SAMBA", and in the "Device URI" field, i enter the username and password, then the ip address of printer server (though i think the simple samba/windows networking computer name will work), followed by a slash and then printer name. eg: smb://login:password@SERVER/PRINTER then i just used the hp deskjet 990c driver (which i installed with gutenprint 5.0). using the deskjet 990c driver was a suggestion directly from hp support...
some notes:
for "Device Name" i just used whatever..
this did not work when the printer name on the server had either spaces OR dashes OR underscores... who knows why?
i used the gutenprint 5.0 drivers for mac available here
http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3
of course, i have to re setup this up again, so i will post again if i have any new info... good luck.