The top-of-the-line Apple LaserWriter 8500 offers an organic shape and soft-green plastic accents that make it a shoo-in as the most stylish printer of this group. With PostScript 3 support, ledger-size printing, and an excellent optional duplexer, it's packed with features well suited for medium-size workgroups. But its management features and its speed-test performance lagged behind the Editors' Choice-winning IBM InfoPrint 20, which is built around the same print engine.

Setting up the LaserWriter was surprisingly difficult. Neither we nor Apple technicians were able to install it on a NetWare network using PConsole; we were forced to use the less robust Apple LaserWriter utility. Once the printer was installed, we found its management interface cumbersome. Although you can set passwords for securing your settings, there's no easy way to access the printer's configuration. The LaserWriter utility does let you configure ports and gray-scale options, as well as download PostScript fonts and adjust print density. You can also use it to manage other vendors' printers if you know their IP addresses.

Physically setting up the printer was a snap, and adding the optional 500-sheet paper tray and duplexer was a simple matter. The LaserWriter delivered excellent output quality on our tests. Text and graphics were exceedingly crisp and detailed, with just a bit of white on the edges of some fills. Two new proprietary technologies aided output: PhotoGrade--which increases the number of gray shades in an image to give the appearance of a much higher resolution--and FinePrint, which lets the printer produce dots of various widths to help reduce the risk of jagged edges. In performance testing, the LaserWriter's speed was about average among its peers for single jobs. The printer slowed down considerably, however, when we sent it multiple jobs simultaneously or asked for multiple copies of a single job--tasks that are very common in a midsize workgroup.