Patent ID: 7517162

Claim:
A printer, comprising: a communication unit configured to communicate with one or more other printers and a client personal computer via a network; a printing unit configured to execute printing based on print data received by the communication unit; a storage unit configured to define data for calculating the power consumption required to perform printing as power consumption calculating data, and store the power consumption calculating data for the printer and the power consumption calculation data for each of the one or more other printers on the network, the power consumption calculation data comprises time required for warm-up (Tw (h)), power consumption per unit time during warm-up (Pw (W)), power consumption per unit time during printing (Pp (W)) and print speed per sheet (S (ppm)); an arithmetic unit configured to calculate the power consumption required to process the print data received from the client personal computer based on the power consumption calculation data for each of the printers and the print data; an identification unit configured to identify the printer on the network having the lowest power consumption based on the calculation results of the arithmetic unit; a printing control unit configured to instruct the printing unit to perform the print process based upon the received print data when the printer identified by the indentification unit is the printer itself; and a communication control unit configured to instruct the communication unit to transfer the received print data to another printer when the printer identified by the identification unit is that other printer.