Compatibility between my 2 1/2 year old Imac 24" and a Apple 30" Cinema Display?

I have the Imac Alu 24", 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo with a ATI Radeon HD2600 graphic card with 256MB VRAM. I will be buying a 2 year old apple Cinema display 30" tomorrow from a colleague and would like to know that my IMAC can easily handle supporting this display at its normal resolution and have a crisp and correct image on the larger screen. I know that this older version of the Alu Imac has the older video out display port, but I presume I can convert it to attach to this 2 year old screen as well. Is there something I'll need to do to get this to work?
My ancillary question is about an older screen. As long as there are no dead pixels and the colors seem uniform, what is the degradation of an average screen like this over time with, lets say, average usage.Don't want to buy something near the end of it's life cycle or when things start to fade.
Thank you