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.