The present invention relates to an operation display device that carries out display of operation screens and acceptance of operations corresponding to function icons displayed in those operation screens and to image forming apparatuses provided therewith, and in particular to operation display devices provided in apparatuses, the power supply mode of which is switched between a normal mode and an energy saving mode and to image forming apparatuses provided therewith.
From the point of view of energy saving, various types of apparatuses are configured in recent years so that, when a condition with no operations continues for more than a prescribed period of time, the power supply to various parts such as the liquid crystal display is stopped thereby entering the energy saving mode. Normally, in the energy saving mode, power supply is stopped excepting to the parts that detect an event for recovering to the normal mode (for example, a prescribed operation by the user or reception of a facsimile (hereinafter, also referred to as fax) and others), and when an event for recovering is detected, the power supply is restarted to all parts of the apparatus.
However, in an apparatus such as a multifunctional peripheral which is provided with a variety of functions such as copying function, scanning function, facsimile transmission and reception function, the parts that need power to be supplied differ depending on the function used. For example, when carrying out fax transmission of a document that is stored in the memory, there is no need to supply power to the printer section. Therefore, there are apparatuses that aim to reduce power consumption by restarting the power supply at the time of recovering from the energy saving mode only to the parts related to the functions to be used after recovery (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-222234). In this apparatus, the recovery from the energy saving mode is not done unless the copy button, document box button, fax button, printer button, or scanner button provided for each function is selected and depressed, and also, the power supply recovery is made only for the part that is required for thus selected function.
While it is effective to restart the power supply only for the part that is related to the function selected by the user, at the time the user selects the function upon recovery, since the user does not know whether that function requires a large power or small power, it is not possible to contribute to energy saving by actively selecting low power consumption functions at the time of recovering from an energy saving mode.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention aim to solve the above problem, and an object is to provide an operation display device in which it is possible to prompt the selection of a low power consumption function at the time of accepting selection of a function in the energy saving state, and an image forming apparatus provided therewith.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds