[deanhills]

As for replacing the battery on your old 2012 laptop, i dont think that would make a significant enough difference. Many laptops (specially the old ones) aren’t so power efficient. So even a healthy battery might not be able to power them for long. However, many (but not all! Beware!) modern laptops are so energy efficient they can last you an entire day, some even more! It solely depends on your budget, but i really recommend getting ahold of one (make sure to do your research first on getting one with great battery life and performance!). But again, it solely depends on your budget. You mentioned being unemployed, so I doubt that you’d have much to spend.

 Thanks for this valuable feedback @ikk157  I'll take this down from my to do list.  You're right of course.  Even though it was a really great Toshiba, maybe still is - i7 with a fast processor, it's dated technology.  

I also understand that you like to use your bigger monitor as it offers a much better experience. But keep on mind two things:

1) Some laptops come in screen sizes that are the same (some even bigger) as your “average monitor”. 

2) Most laptops have display outputs (such as HDMI) that allow you to hook them up to a monitor to get the full “desktop experience”. So that completely eliminates the point of a desktop. 

I'm on the HDMI wavelength - in fact my TV is connected to an old tape recorder in that way - those hard disk LG DVD recorders that were discontinued a long time ago - I like to record movies with it.  The TV is also dated - a very good LG of its time - 2008 model, with only 1 HDMI slot but with a brilliant quality screen - albeit only 22 inches.  I did get an HDMI adapter that allows for 3 inputs, but have been too lazy so far, and during load shedding times it's useless anyway.  I'm also using my computer more for TV these days than my TV since reception via the Internet is much better than through cable and the monitor image much more improved on my Dell monitor.  I have a feeling that one day cable will be completely phased out.  Which would make my TV redundant anyway.  Hence why I haven't replaced it.  It's a non-essential outgoing piece of equipment.  I find the current large screen digital TVs are much too expensive and taking up too much space.

As for the pricing of electronic in general in the UAE, I’ve personally found it to be insanely expensive. Specially with their added VAT, I feel like buying electronics from there is very costly. If you want to buy something at its cheapest price, just buy it online from let’s say the US, and get it shipped to you through a courier service such as shopandship (they give you a US address, along with addresses from all over the world, where you have your bought item shipped to, and from there they’ll ship it to you... absolutely smart!).

Haha .... looks like I then left just in time.  The beginning of VAT just started to happen when I departed.  I must have lived there during the good times.

The fact that you’d consider pricing of electronics in the UAE cheap really concerns me. That’s an indication that buying electronics in South Africa is significantly more expensive, i surely hope that’s not true. However, that’s also been something my South African colleagues hinted as they mentioned that they bought iPhones from here that are a fraction of the cost of an iPhone in South Africa. Insane!

 This is a very true observation.  But mostly due to the state of the South African currency and ridiculous customs charges for importing products.  Like totally unreal.  Problem is those charges are based on rates of years ago when the currency differences were much much less, so on a sliding scale one is already in huge customs charge brackets for cheap products.  So there is that - the currency difference, then on top of it the very inefficient customs charges - so you don't find brand products in the same way as in the UAE and then of course huge shipping charges. Also, South Africa is situated very far from your big name suppliers of the world and some of them don't like to do business with South Africans because of the customs issues (products get stuck there because people can't afford some of the charges) and crime issue - digital fraud. On the positive side however, there are some top IT guys in South Africa who are designing and manufacturing their own products.  The products are expensive, but quality wise better quality than imported versions of the same price.  So that's an interesting learning curve as well.  One thing about South Africans is their ability to adapt and design their way out of problems with plenty of can-do enthusiasm and a sense of humour.  I'm waiting for plenty of products to design us out of the current load shedding dilemma given that the people have given up load shedding is ever going to stop one day - in fact is in all probability going to get much worse than it already is.  

BTW - what is your suggestion for a really good laptop when there are regular electricity downtime issues?  Haha ... let me guess what you are going to recommend.  Apple? MacBook Air?