Some not all of my PCs are taking an age to print to the plotter in our office - up to 10 mins and it renders the PC unusable -- just freezes

VW10.1.0
Windows 2000 SP3
Designjet is using the latest HP driver

Anyone else seen this or anything like it.

First, you should upgrade to the latest version of Vectorworks. 10.1 has bugs.
Second, make sure you have enough RAM (the more the merrier with this application).
Third, check to make sure you have upgraded both the drivers and the firmware on the plotter. If the plotter is on a network, you have to disconnect it from the network, and hook it up to one machine with a parallel cable in order to upgrade the firmware. Then connect it back to the network.
I have the PS version of this plotter and only have trouble with time it takes in Postscript mode. Non-postscript works right away.
Good Luck

I have the HP500PS model and find using the HP rip a drag. Its reasonably quick in normal quality CAD mode, but it won't print transparent overlays, and grey tint prints a solid light blue. I presume these problems are because of the postscript. How can you print in non-postscript to this machine Jnr?

Plotting (with HP500) is very slow, since I upgraded to VW 10.1.2
Now I work with win XP, 512 RAM, and files with images (JPEG)or patterns are printed in several minutes; sometimes the plotter don't start, because it's elaborating enormous files...
with my old PC (win 2000 and VW 9.5) printing was faster than now!