Patent ID: 7246957

Claim:
A serial printer comprising: a main body formed with a print-medium conveying path through which a print medium is conveyed in a conveying direction, the print medium having a width in a width direction substantially perpendicular to the conveying direction; a carriage that is movable, with respect to the main body, reciprocatingly in the width direction; a print head mounted on the carriage for printing an image on the print medium based on print data; a detector disposed at the carriage for detecting the print medium; an information acquiring portion that acquires information for determining whether to detect the print medium; an existence-detection determining portion that determines whether to detect existence of the print medium based on the information acquired by the information acquiring portion; an existence-detection controlling portion that, when the existence-detection determining portion determines that detection should be performed, controls the carriage to move to a position at which the detector confronts the print-medium conveying path and that controls the detector to detect the existence of the print medium prior to printing; and a print controlling portion that controls the print head and the carriage to print the image based on the print data, the print controlling portion prohibiting the print head and the carriage from printing the image based on the print data when the detector detects no print medium.