I have laptop and 1. 32" external display 2. wireless fullsize keyboard 3. wireless mouse 4. two hard drives inside, no problem to upgrade if I felt like 5. agree, laptop taking some space, but if I really cared I could buy vertical stand 6. so does mine laptop 7. my laptop has 4, I use permanently only 1 8. I could replace pretty much everything besides motherboard and CPU 9. so are refurbished good quality thinkpad and dell paotps 10. laptops have also plenty of configs 11. that's really unlikely scenario 12. my laptop has permanently closed lid, so no camera, but yeah, microphone would need to be disabled if I worried so much