Refurbished iMac G5s -- any thoughts out there?

Question

Strongly thinking of getting a 2 gig G5 iMac running 512 mb of RAM w/SuperDrive.
I guess it's 1 edition old, prior to the current 1.9 and 2.1 gig iMac G5s out there.
Any experiences, good or bad, at buying Reburbs? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Any experiences, good or bad, at buying Reburbs? Thanks in advance!
I purchased a brand-new rev. A iMac G5 17-inch system when they first came out. It was an "O.K." purchase. But, I lost a lot of money on it. It depreciated really, really fast. And, a few months later when I had to sell it, I lost close to $1000 on it.
So, that taught me not to buy the new Apple's at top dollar from Apple.
When I got the funds to purchase a replacement Mac, I went refurbished to save money.
I purchased a 20-inch 2.0 GHz iMac G5 with 512 MB of RAM and 250 GB hard drive for $1299.
I also purchased it with AppleCare.
That saved me about $400 on the price of the new system. I also upgraded it's memory to 2 GB of RAM. Since the memory for the older iMac G5 is cheaper, that also saved me another $300.
So, to get the configuration I have, I would have spent $700 more to buy the new model. So, for me it was a substantial savings.
Here's a rough summary of it's condition as I received it:
It had some light scratches on the case, but not too bad.
It had a 1/8-inch deep by 1/4-inch wide (approx.) chip in the top left of the case in the clear plastic on the front edge facing me.
The Keyboard looked like new, and was wrapped nicely.
The mouse was packed loosely, and was marked-up. I was able to get the mouse to look nice with some cleaning. But, the mouse button sticks and gets difficult to press.
The LCD screen (a 20-inch model) had a couple of long marks on the surface that looked like surface scarrs. But, with some persistent scrubbing with lint-free CD-Cleaning cloths (no chemicals - fresh clothes), I was able to buff the scarr marks away.
The computer and the accessories had several long dirt marks on them (around the ring in the stand on the rear, and some of the cables). The marks looked like they were caused by being dragged hard against something brown.
And, the Ethernet port would only make contact with the cable when you pressed very hard against the cable with your finger (applying downward pressure).
The original factory install / restore DVD's had scratches on them. But, the computer also came with new OS X 10.4 Tiger and iLife '05 packages (DVD's, manuals, coupons, etc.). So, that negated any defect in the original media.
Since receiving the computer, Apple replaced the logic board to fix the Ethernet problem.
They also have replaced the front bezel (just 2 days ago) so the chip is gone.
I am now waiting for the mouse to be replaced.
Overall, I am very pleased with the system.