Patent ID: 7517035

Claim:
A printing device for printing a plurality of dots on a medium used for printing comprising: a print head having a plurality of print elements for forming dots disposed respectively in a row direction, which is a direction of relative movement thereof with respect to the medium, and in an array direction, which is substantially orthogonal to the row direction, the print elements being capable of printing dots at positions which can be regarded as the same positions on the medium in the row direction; print element selecting unit that selects any one of the print elements being capable of printing dots at positions which can be regarded as the same positions on the medium in the row direction as a usable print element for each row in the row direction of the print head; print head controlling unit for controlling the print head so that only the usable print element selected by the print element selecting unit is used; and printing unit for executing printing using the print head controlled by the print head controlling unit.