Flu, nice take over :-). I agree with your statement, which is why I suggest a SSD upgrade and a new reinstall OS. That’s sufficient for most people. A 4 years old computer is more than sufficient for most people. Since he have a $500 budget, I think SSD and OS will get him the best bang for his bucks IMHO.
I’ve done many upgrades on every components in a computer for many years and I’ve never noticed as big of a performance improvement as adding a SSD. This is on a 4+ year old laptop too. So, for $200 ($100 for SSD and $100 for Windows 7), I’m pretty sure his computer will probably blow away anything he can get off the shelf for $500 today for most if not all of his use cases.
sdr, if you want, I can teach/show you how to do it. It’s quite easy.
