What is best for a Epson 960 printer to be hooked up to? thanks
A USB cable is a lot easier to work with. As long as your OS provides good USB support it's the way to go IMHO.
Makes no difference, the printer is way slower than the interface. USB ports are more useful for other things, so I would go for parallel.
I don't know about Epson but when I had my HP printer hooked to the parallel port the computer was practically useless for anything else when a job was printing - way slow and jerky (and we're talking about a 1.6 GHz P4 here). When I installed the USB printer driver and hooked to that port, I could print in the background with almost no noticeable effect on other computer programs that were running in the foreground. I was amazed at the difference.
I think it depends on the amount of memory in the printer. With USB, the computer can dump the whole file into the printer pronto, so you can get on with other things. Get printer memory and go with USB is my suggestion.
If you checked the BIOS settings the parallel ports were probably set to Standard. If you set them to EPP your printer (and scanners, etc,) hum along quite nicely. No different to USB (but USB is a lot easier to just plug into without having to worry about such hidden settings). I would use the USB ports for other things that really need them.
There is no measurable difference in the print speed between usb and parellel. If there is a card readed on the printer, the usb will help with the speed.
