In the early days of personal computing a parallel printer cable could refer to any of a wide range of cables that connected a computer and a printer. Over time, standards were established or adopted, ...

First introduced in 1970, parallel ports were originally designed to connect business computers to printers. With their inclusion on the IBM PC in the early 1980s, they became an industry standard.

I never noticed much a difference. I say go USB simply because it's better to pay $5 for a cable than $30 for a cable that does the same thing.

I don't think that's quite the same thing, though - that thread is talking about USB<->Parallel convertors, where I get the feeling uziqp has a printer that has both Parallel and USB ports on the back ...