What to do with early 2006 17 inch iMac

[2006iMac]

I have an early 2006 iMac which is in almost perfect condition, it is faster than many new computers that i have tried, it boots up quickly and works perfectly. The 17 inch screen however is starting to have the vertical lines issue, i currently have 6 lines in random places on the screen. They don't appear in screenshots. How can i get rid of these? The screen was perfect when i got it in January and i only paid $100 for the iMac. it's running snow leopard and i have upgraded it to 2gb of ram. I love it lol

 

[MacRobert10]

Typically on those models the problems continue to get worse until the display is basically shot. It's a defect in the LCD panel. The panels are expensive for those particular models and difficult to come by and they're unique to the 2006 17" model.

What you could do if you're up to it is open the unit up, disconnect the video connector to the LCD display, close the unit up, and then plug an external monitor into the unit. I have a friend that put his iMac like that on the floor and then did that procedure and it works fine. The only catch is that the thing is on the floor beside his desk so he has to bend over to turn it on, but that's the way it is with a lot of floor standing PCs too. He looked into LCD panels for them and they were running in th $300 - $400 range and just figured it might happen again.