Yeah, I like the idea behind TALOS, but nearly $4k for just the motherboard and CPU??? That's a bit much for me to swallow. :-(
I agree that 4K is a tough pill to swallow, hopefully something like this eventually goes down to the ~2K price range, I could probably jump on it then.
If people don't help support it at $4k, it will never reach $2k.
The issue is at 4K I might as well buy a "proper" POWER server from IBM (like the S812LC) for the same price since I don't need a "workstation" form-factor (I've already got some rackmount equipment at home, and my current development system is just a Fedora VM running on my home server).
The S812LC is designed, and made, by Tyan.
http://www.tyan.com/campaign/openpower/
If by 'proper' power system you mean IBM Pseries, this is not it.
That's not that much actually. Look at Thinkpad P70 or other Xeon-based high-end workstation.
https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php