Slow printing on HP Laserjet 1200

When I print a file from a webpage to my HP Laserjet 1200 printer, it often takes a long time for the printing to start. I am running Ubuntu 10.04. .pdf files and .odt files from my computer print quite quickly and there is no problem. Also, I have Windows XP loaded in VMWare Player, and when I try printing the same file from a webpage through this virtual machine, the printing is just as fast as if the file were a .pdf or .odt file on the host computer. That is to say, there is no problem at all to print from the virtual machine.

I imagine that some sort of conversion is taking place - from html to pdf or postscript or something - and then the file is printed. This conversion takes terribly long in some cases through CUPS, but there does not seem to be any delay whatsoever when printing through the virtual machine. This strikes me as very strange.

Is there any adjustment I can make to my CUPS or foomatic configuration that might help speed things up?

Thanks,

Paul Muhly