Lexmark z53: lprng versus cups on server

[Joel Hammer]

I have to recreate a print server. My old server, caldera 2.4,  ran lprng,
about which I now know alot. I am going to be using a much newer linux
distro (lindows or Suse) so I have the option of using cups on the server.

The lexmark z53 provided linux drivers and worked great under linux and
lprng. I had to set up separate queues for draft, high quality text, and
photo quality, which the user could decide among for his/her print job.

I had the queues configured to be able to process postscript jobs, and
all the clients were configured to send postscript only to the server.
This is the norm on linux and it is easy to configure on windows. I am
not going to store any drivers on the server for downloading to clients.

According to the blurb in the Suse manual, cups has the advantage of
offering the client a dialog so the client can more easily choose his/her
own printing preferences.

My questions are:

     1. Is this cups dialogue made available to all clients,
     including old versions of linux without cups installed
     and windows clients?

     2. Is this the only advantage of cups?

     3. Has anyone set up a lexmark z53 with cups? I would
     appreciate hearing about your experience.

Thanks,

Joel