i'm notorious for running off an oily rag, in recent years weve had the gamut, our current top spec is a pb12" 1.33 & a dp mdd 1.25 (these were the first new macs i'd bought since my 1st mac, an se30), both are fast enough for the prepress & design we do. at home i use a 466 with a 800mhz, (1mb cache) upgrade which worked out very cheap, from ebay, i find this system at least 20% faster than the qs 800 256kb cache, which i find about the same speed as a 533 1mb cache. anything with a 133 bus is really dropping in price, over christmas i saw a 400mhz agp go for $320au ($250us?) incredible. i think any digital audio or gigabit ethernet boxes offer the best power/price ratio, (but who wants to run tiger on a sub 733mhz box...)
one thing about apple is they are very careful with their price v performance, & the way they stage the release of technology, combo here, 400mb fw there, 600mhz bus here, 400mhz ddr ram there...the marketing deot are in on everything
id buy only what you really need, i mean whats another $700 going to achieve when you only sit there a few hours a day, just surf while you wait, whats the rush?, spend the rest on a itunes server, or a new pair of shoes
finally, i guess this is obvious to most, macs are incredibly reliable, i havent had any serious hardware failures (besides the occasional hard drive & power supply), so buying 2nd hand shouldnt matter
i know they are cool but being a fashion victim (when the money could be better spent) is not
dismounting high horse
hey maybe wait for the headless imac...$550??