woah! you might beat my record, although my imac was only 450mhz, yours is dual 1.8ghz which isnt really outdated, how much did that cost you 5000$? but i think al used the same type of imac i had for even longer
Al used his iMac for 8 years, I believe it was from 2001-2009. My mom used a Power Mac 6500 for 7 years, 1997 - 2004, but I did install a G3 upgrade in 2003 to speed it up. She got my iMac G4 when I got the G5. She used the iMac G4 until 2009 when I got her an iMac G5 from the recycler. So generally, a Mac gets about 7 years of use between me and my Mom (the Performa 400 only got 3 years of main use, because it was so slow. I still have it though)
This G5 only cost $2000, it was the cheapest model. There's actually a funny story that goes along with it - originally I was going to get a refurb from Apple's site, but when I ordered the refurb it said 3-4 weeks to ship. That was too long, so we went to CompUSA the same day to buy a new one. 2 days later FedEx delivered a refurb G5 to the house. So much for 3 weeks. Had to send it back and everything, but for a couple of days I had two dual G5s.
The G5's been upgraded a ton also. Originally it had 256 MB RAM, 80 GB HD, and a 64 MB Nvidia card. Now it has 3 GB (pending 4 GB when I get some working sticks), 2 x 250 GB HD, and a 128 MB ATI card with custom cooling fan so I can overclock. I figure I can get at least another year out of the G5 until 10.7 comes out and people start making Intel only software (most developers support 2 OS versions, which means they still support 10.5 and PPC).
Once I do get a new Mac at home I'll probably bring the G5 to the office and use it there. Right now all I have there is an eMac 1.42 GHz so it'll be a nice upgrade.