Patent ID: 8230132

Claim:
A management device for managing a device, comprising: a control unit that comprises: a status acquiring unit that acquires a status of the device; a setting unit that allows the user to set a periodic acquisition of the status of the device by the status acquiring unit to be valid or invalid, and a notifying unit that, if the device is in a specific status, notifies information about the specific status to another device; and a first management screen supply unit that supplies first management screen data to a display unit, the first management screen data being used for showing a first management screen in which the acquired status of the device is indicated, wherein the control unit determines whether a notifying function of the notifying unit is valid or invalid, if the notifying function of the notifying unit is valid, the control unit controls the status acquiring unit to periodically acquire the status of the device regardless of whether the first management screen supply unit starts up or not, and if the notifying function of the notifying unit is invalid and the periodic acquisition of the status of the device by the status acquiring unit is set to be invalid, the control unit does not control the status acquiring unit to periodically acquire the status of the device, but controls the status acquiring unit to acquire the status of the device when the first management screen supply unit starts up in response to the instruction from the user, and if the notifying function of the notifying unit is invalid and the periodic acquisition of the status of the device by the status acquiring unit is set to be valid, the control unit controls the status acquiring unit to periodically acquire the status of the device, but does not control the status acquiring unit to acquire the status of the device when the first management screen supply unit starts up in response to the instruction from the user.