Sierra support for old printer

I’ve upgraded my MacBook Pro to Sierra, but discovered that it won’t add my old printer, a Canon MP640, for which there doesn’t seem to be a driver. Canon support has told me that I have two options: buy a new printer, or downgrade to El Capitan. What can I do?

Oddly, Apple lists your printer as being supported in Sierra using its existing driver, although Canon reports that it isn’t supported. You have three options: replace the printer, try the old printer driver, or try Gutenprint.

Provided that you’ve updated Sierra to at least version 10.12.1, you may be able to get the last (2015) version of the driver from Canon’s support site to install and work properly, as Apple says you should. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to uninstall the driver and pick another option.

Gutenprint ( bit.ly/2jaEmLh), supports many older printers, and we’ve found reports online that version 5.2.11, the latest stable one, works with Sierra. That website has instructions on installing it. For recent printers, it often works as well as their original drivers did.