Canon MX850 printer - CUPS driver?

[Gooter]

I bought the Canon MX850 multifunction inkjet printer with my recent iMac purchase. Canon's support site has an updated driver available however it is a CUPS driver. I am not sure what that is or if I need it.

The printer is connected to my wireless router's ethernet port (after I connected it to the USB port on my iMac to initially configure the printer's network settings). I first installed the drivers and software from the included CD. The driver version on the CD is 7.1. The updated CUPS driver from the website is 10.2. I did download that and installed it however the driver version stayed the same, 7.1, rather than updating to 10.2. However, if I connect the printer directly to my iMac via USB, the driver version then changes to 10.2. So, when connected to the network the driver version is 7.1 but when connected to iMac it is 10.2.

What the heck is a CUPS driver?
Do I need it?
Should I just use the drivers from the CD?

Thanks!

 

[gsahli]

CUPS (common unix printing system) is the print control system used on OS X.
You should use the newest download driver for your OS version.

 

[Gooter]

Canon Tech Support finally got back to me regarding my same questions. Here is what they said...

The CUPS drivers provide a higher level of translation for high-end
units and 64-bit applications. Typically you will not need them unless
you are printing with a high resolution graphics program. It does not
add any additional functionality or performance in a wireless or any
other environment.

They make it seem like I don't need it. Confused now, what do I do? I did try to install the CUPS driver but when connected via the network, the driver version does not reflect the new CUPS driver.

 

[gsahli]

I don't have a Canon and I'm out of ideas.
I'd go to Apple Discussions - there's a guy PAHU there who supports a company that uses all sizes of Canon and can answer most Canon questions.