The propensity of early liquid cooling G5s to failure does make a dual 2.7 a risky purchase, and this has to be factored into your decision. However, so long as you were able to ensure that it is working presently, and so long as you go on to do a thorough service of the cooling unit early on in ownership, the quoted price looks good.
I just bought a dual G5 (not liquid cooled), and am very content with the performance, which actually compares favourably with a high-end Core 2 Duo iMac for all ordinary tasks.
I could have bought a new machine instead, and thought about it for a long time. No doubt a new i7 iMac, for instance, would have opened documents and scrolled through them and loaded web pages faster than my G5, but the difference between 4 seconds and 1 second opening a Word file, say, is not a significant one in actual use. It is certainly not worth an extra $1800 expense, especially given the rate of depreciation.
The big story here is that G5s have gotten into the "collectable" price range; you can buy one for the same price as a well-preserved IIfx these days. And that, as they say, is really something. What I suspect is going to be the real issue in collecting G5s is case damage, which is really shockingly common in shipped machines, so if you can buy one locally, do so.
I just bought a dual G5 (not liquid cooled), and am very content with the performance, which actually compares favourably with a high-end Core 2 Duo iMac for all ordinary tasks.
I could have bought a new machine instead, and thought about it for a long time. No doubt a new i7 iMac, for instance, would have opened documents and scrolled through them and loaded web pages faster than my G5, but the difference between 4 seconds and 1 second opening a Word file, say, is not a significant one in actual use. It is certainly not worth an extra $1800 expense, especially given the rate of depreciation.
The big story here is that G5s have gotten into the "collectable" price range; you can buy one for the same price as a well-preserved IIfx these days. And that, as they say, is really something. What I suspect is going to be the real issue in collecting G5s is case damage, which is really shockingly common in shipped machines, so if you can buy one locally, do so.