| 摘要 |
An image forming apparatus (1000) includes ink cartridges (10), a plurality of image forming means (34,35), ink-remaining-amount management means (208), maintenance determination means (206), information writing means (212), ink-amount estimation means (207), and maintenance-executability determination means (207). If an ink near-empty or empty state occurs in one of the cartridges due to image formation, the ink-amount estimation means estimates an amount of ink required to execute the maintenance on the other cartridges based on a need for and/or a type of maintenance determined by the maintenance determination means. If the maintenance-executability determination means determines that the maintenance is unexecutable on at least one of the other cartridges based on the required ink amount and a remaining ink amount, the maintenance-executability determination means determines that the unexecutable cartridge is at an ink near-empty or empty state and stops writing or updating information indicative of a spent state on the memory of the unexecutable cartridge. |
