One of the tabs inside lets you copy the disk (at least in Mavericks). 1:35 video. It took something like 6 hours to do the transfer in my case (to copy ~ 250 GB over USB2) but it was painless.
The SSD will help, but if your RAM is filled all the time, there's only so much it can do. J's MBPro has 16 GB so it should last a while (fingers crossed).
She uses it as a desktop (the lid is closed all the time, external monitor, mouse and keyboard). I suspect the video card is having issues when feeding the internal display (it seems scrambled sometimes) - but maybe it's just a timing issue on the hand-off to the external monitor. Unfortunately, I don't think much can be done about it short of Apple replacing the motherboard. But I haven't looked carefully (no need, yet).
I vaguely recall issues with some nVidia graphics cards due to bad solder bumps on some of their chips. It happens. :-( iFixit has guides on replacing video cards in iMacs that have video cards. I forget - do you have a 2133? If so, this is the guide for replacing the video card (if it ever comes to that).
I wouldn't drill holes in the back, myself. ;-)
Fingers crossed that it keeps running smoothly for you!
Cheers,
Scott.
The SSD will help, but if your RAM is filled all the time, there's only so much it can do. J's MBPro has 16 GB so it should last a while (fingers crossed).
She uses it as a desktop (the lid is closed all the time, external monitor, mouse and keyboard). I suspect the video card is having issues when feeding the internal display (it seems scrambled sometimes) - but maybe it's just a timing issue on the hand-off to the external monitor. Unfortunately, I don't think much can be done about it short of Apple replacing the motherboard. But I haven't looked carefully (no need, yet).
I vaguely recall issues with some nVidia graphics cards due to bad solder bumps on some of their chips. It happens. :-( iFixit has guides on replacing video cards in iMacs that have video cards. I forget - do you have a 2133? If so, this is the guide for replacing the video card (if it ever comes to that).
I wouldn't drill holes in the back, myself. ;-)
Fingers crossed that it keeps running smoothly for you!
Cheers,
Scott.