Printer speed, USB vs LPT

I would like to know if there truly is a difference in speed of printing using either LPT cable or USB cable. When the printer is connected via LPT1 port, it is slow to begin printing, when using USB cable, the printing begins almost immediately.Also, using 2 different pentium class computers, one with 544 MB Ram and a 466 MhZ CPU, this one the printing seems quite fast, and the other a humble 233 MhZ CPU with 128 MB Ram. This computer seems to print slow. Does the RAM, CPU speed and USB connection truly make a speed difference?

Both PCs use Windows Millennium Edition. (yeah yeah, I know, get rid of ME and get XP… 😉 )