I have a small collection of LaserWriters, and wanted to add an 8500 for a long time before I found one last year. Truth be told, however, I am not sure I should have gone to the trouble taken to get it. The 8500 looks like a fabulous machine, in theory: last of a distinguished breed, and all that. However, before you rush out to find one too, you should know a few things.
First, it is not as reliable as the bulletproof machines that share the chassis design of the 16/600 (I have, for instance, a LW Pro 630 from 1993, and it just goes on and on without complaint or fuss). It seems that very few 8500s reached high pages of service without repair.
Second, and as has been noted, unlike the cheap and plentiful HP-compatible toner cartridges that go in the LW Pro and 16/600, 8500 toner cartridges (IBM Infoprint 20-compatibles) are both rather hard to find and tend to be very expensive when you can find them. Parts for toners (cleaning blades, etc.), for those inclined to try DIY work on the cartridges, just cannot be had, so forget that. Your local toner refill shop can't help, because the printers were rare and the design short-lived. The regular price for a new OEM cartridge (IBM is the most common brand) tends to the $200-300 range, but there are a few places now selling remanufactured toners for about $100 a pop. So expect to pay minimally three times the price for the same number of pages printed using remanufactured cartridges in an 8500 rather than a 16/600, and much more if using OEM cartridges. In other words, you can buy something like three 16/600 toners (18,000 pages) for the price of one of the cheapest 8500 toner cartridges available (14,000 pages). More than that, those three cartridges can each be refilled maybe three times apiece, so you do the math and the cost/page sums; the 8500 will never come out on top.
Third, an 8500 is really big. You will need lots of space. Forget about popping it on the corner of your desk; it will want a desk of its own. I had seen plenty of photos of the 8500 before pressing the purchase button, and knew the dimensions, but was still not prepared for the looming size of the thing on arrival.
And fourth, an 8500 is pretty noisy. The engineers never reached the point of shutting off the fan at idle, like printers manufactured a couple of years later tend to do. Shame, really. I suspect this also means that it continues to draw a lot of energy at idle, since fan cooling is apparently always needed. Exhaust air is always warm, and I have set the energy saver to maximum via the Apple Printer Utility.
True, the 8500 can print on A3/ 11"x17" paper, and that is a rarity. The 8500 is also itself rare, and is an impressively fast printer for a machine of its era, while the print quality is also excellent. I do like the thing, especially as I have an interest in the big professional units Apple produced in the late 90s (and in machines of the "Gil" era generally, who I think is/ which I think are underrated), and I particularly like the fact that it matches my 8600/ beige G3 machines — but I'd probably replace it with a 16/600 for practical reasons if given the chance. I think the 16/600, the processor in which was a big step up from my LW Pro's 68030+68882, is probably Apple's best laser printer to look out for.
First, it is not as reliable as the bulletproof machines that share the chassis design of the 16/600 (I have, for instance, a LW Pro 630 from 1993, and it just goes on and on without complaint or fuss). It seems that very few 8500s reached high pages of service without repair.
Second, and as has been noted, unlike the cheap and plentiful HP-compatible toner cartridges that go in the LW Pro and 16/600, 8500 toner cartridges (IBM Infoprint 20-compatibles) are both rather hard to find and tend to be very expensive when you can find them. Parts for toners (cleaning blades, etc.), for those inclined to try DIY work on the cartridges, just cannot be had, so forget that. Your local toner refill shop can't help, because the printers were rare and the design short-lived. The regular price for a new OEM cartridge (IBM is the most common brand) tends to the $200-300 range, but there are a few places now selling remanufactured toners for about $100 a pop. So expect to pay minimally three times the price for the same number of pages printed using remanufactured cartridges in an 8500 rather than a 16/600, and much more if using OEM cartridges. In other words, you can buy something like three 16/600 toners (18,000 pages) for the price of one of the cheapest 8500 toner cartridges available (14,000 pages). More than that, those three cartridges can each be refilled maybe three times apiece, so you do the math and the cost/page sums; the 8500 will never come out on top.
Third, an 8500 is really big. You will need lots of space. Forget about popping it on the corner of your desk; it will want a desk of its own. I had seen plenty of photos of the 8500 before pressing the purchase button, and knew the dimensions, but was still not prepared for the looming size of the thing on arrival.
And fourth, an 8500 is pretty noisy. The engineers never reached the point of shutting off the fan at idle, like printers manufactured a couple of years later tend to do. Shame, really. I suspect this also means that it continues to draw a lot of energy at idle, since fan cooling is apparently always needed. Exhaust air is always warm, and I have set the energy saver to maximum via the Apple Printer Utility.
True, the 8500 can print on A3/ 11"x17" paper, and that is a rarity. The 8500 is also itself rare, and is an impressively fast printer for a machine of its era, while the print quality is also excellent. I do like the thing, especially as I have an interest in the big professional units Apple produced in the late 90s (and in machines of the "Gil" era generally, who I think is/ which I think are underrated), and I particularly like the fact that it matches my 8600/ beige G3 machines — but I'd probably replace it with a 16/600 for practical reasons if given the chance. I think the 16/600, the processor in which was a big step up from my LW Pro's 68030+68882, is probably Apple's best laser printer to look out for.