Comparative efficiency decisions in print operations

摘要

Methods, devices, services and program products are provided for selecting a printer from a plurality of printers as a function of a printer resource consumption attribute where there is a network environment comprising a plurality of printers, each of the plurality of printers having a resource consumption attribute value. A user invokes a print operation through the network environment and a processing means compares weighted resource consumption attribute values for each of the plurality of printers. Processing means automatically select at least one destination printer from the plurality of printers having a lower resource usage requirement for performing a print operation relative to at least one unselected printer of the plurality of printers. Processing means also automatically choose a destination printer as a function of an availability of each of the destination printers.