Patent ID: 7251424

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image forming unit which has an image carrier, a charging portion which applies a predetermined voltage including AC voltage to the image carrier, an exposure portion which exposes the image carrier charged by the charging portion to form an electrostatic latent image, a developing portion which develops the electrostatic latent image and a transferring portion for transferring the developed image onto a recording medium; a receiving unit which receives time information on a time required to start image formation of a second page subsequent to a first page; a control unit which controls said image forming unit; and an image processing unit which processes image information from an external device, wherein said control unit determines whether to continue or to temporarily stop an application of the AC voltage to the image carrier between the first and second pages of image formations in accordance with the time information, wherein said image forming unit forms on a recording medium an image corresponding to the image information processed by said image processing unit, and wherein the time information is based on a time necessary to process image information of the second page by said image processing unit.