x-mas present ideas?

[redfish]

My dad has an HP Pavilion DV4-2160us laptop. I thought I'd upgrade it for a christmas present. Its specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, SATA HDD, 4GB DDR3 RAM, integrated graphics, etc. My Ideas (and rebuttals):

-SSD.
no-no because he believes that he absolutely needs a 500GB HDD, there's no second drive bay on the laptop, and an SSD big enough to equal the size of his current HDD is waaay too expensive.

-RAM
Kinda-sorta a reasonable idea because he would percieve a bigger difference than there actually is (he's fallen into all sorts of marketing traps), and 8GB of DDR3 RAM is only $100, cheap compared to the SSD but still kinda expensive for me.

-CPU
Not really that good of an idea because his i5 is already bottlenecked by all the other components, although he could use 4 cores (but it would probably be incompatible because of the integrated graphics).

-Graphics card
Probably the best idea of all, because I think he has an open PATA (mini PCI-E) slot on his mobo. My only problem is that I can't find any laptop graphics cards anywhere...
Any ideas?

 

[Slaymate]

After a quick look at the HP site I think your only update is memory or a SSD.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

My dad has an HP Pavilion DV4-2160us laptop. I thought I'd upgrade it for a christmas present. Its specs: Intel Core i5 CPU, SATA HDD, 4GB DDR3 RAM, integrated graphics, etc. My Ideas (and rebuttals):

-SSD.
no-no because he believes that he absolutely needs a 500GB HDD, there's no second drive bay on the laptop, and an SSD big enough to equal the size of his current HDD is waaay too expensive.

-RAM
Kinda-sorta a reasonable idea because he would percieve a bigger difference than there actually is (he's fallen into all sorts of marketing traps), and 8GB of DDR3 RAM is only $100, cheap compared to the SSD but still kinda expensive for me.

-CPU
Not really that good of an idea because his i5 is already bottlenecked by all the other components, although he could use 4 cores (but it would probably be incompatible because of the integrated graphics).

-Graphics card
Probably the best idea of all, because I think he has an open PATA (mini PCI-E) slot on his mobo. My only problem is that I can't find any laptop graphics cards anywhere...
Any ideas?

You cannot upgrade the gpu on that laptop. The ssd is the only one of those updates that is worth the money. I would try convincing him that its better than a large hdd. The anandtech ssd anthology is a good article for doing that.

 

[MindoverMaster]

SSD- why not just get an external enclosure, and put his 500 in it?

I hope he's using a x64 OS. 4GB should be enough for anybody that doesn't game or programming/engineering.

Forget the CPU. Any upgrade supported would be a big waste.

You cannot put a graphic card in a laptop with integrated video. I don't think they fit a mini-pci-e. Scratch that idea.

The only other thing I could think of, is get him a nice USB external mouse.