Well said. I do find this forum completely full of folks who continuing advance the notion that you must upgrade to the new, latest Mac or else your stuff is just way behind. Kind of an apple mac fanboy sales person mentality -- strange. Rarely are the processors the bottleneck for the majority of the users - the drive is. But to each his own - people rationalize things to no end.
The SSD upgrade on that model is a slam dunk given the extra sata on the logic board - whether you do it yourself or have a professional do it. The drive and connectors maybe run you 200 bucks (120 ssd to 1tb hdd is fine), the DIY fusion drive creation is easy - any service center or professional should charge should be very reasonable as you don't even have to remove the logic board to connect. It's plug and play - not rock science. You remove the screen - loosen the logic board - plug it in - and tighten back up the logic board - replace the screen and then done. Granted its sata II but the SSD, even on sata II, will crank out at 4-7 times your traditional drive speed.
The difference in response is absolutely stunning even on my i3 core and the machine will rock especially with an i7 core. Yes, I forgot that i7 can take 32 GB as posted on this forum. Man, that thing should really rock with ssd. IMHO, the ssd coupled with fusion is really changing this "upgrade after three years" traditional thought.
Emotional - yes, absolutely.
See OWC video on it. I did it myself and I'm no expert.