Network Printing...what gives?

We just switched over to share-based printing. We were using direct
IP printing (local IP ports setup and directed to networked printers),
and it worked flawlessly, but it has it's drawbacks.

Anyway, we installed printers on a Win2K server. The latest drivers
were installed and the printers shared out using standard naming
conventions. My problem is that printing this way is killing us.
We're seeing a lot of issues with Word and Outlook hanging and/or
losing their "default printer" even though it is available in control
panel. Also, job are constantly getting hung up in the queues - we've
got plenty of disk space for the spooler so that's not the problem.

I guess what I want to know is how to do other corporations configure
their print environments? I mean, am I missing sometihng with the
setup here?

Thanks.