Can I change my HDD for a SSD without AHCI?

I have a brand new Pavilion DM4-3000ea ( this one here HP Laptops - HP Pavilion dm4-3002ea Laptop with FREE Bag & Mouse (worth £45) ). I've found when browsing and scrolling down long pages ( like this one at Home | Mail Online ) the pointer keeps stuttering or freezing momentarily. At first I thought it may be the graphics chip but now I'm thinking it may be the HDD being too slow. I decided to swap the existing HDD for a new SSD, something like the Corsair Force Series 3 or OCZ Agility 3. I checked in the BIOS and found there was no AHCI option and wondered if this was a problem so I contacted HP and they tell me I can't put an SSD in this laptop. They've got to be kidding, are they right?

 

I have a dv6 i7 and see no option for AHCI either plus HP made me feel like a bad customer when I went to the Intel 510 SSD. Customer support points the finger at it no matter what I ask about. It really runs well and fast and my windows HDD score went from 5.9 to 7.8. I cloned it from the USB using Acronis and it worked. I guess I was not supposed to do it that way but all seems well for the time being.

 

IINM, the laptop was running on AHCI all the times.