Everything that you have identified should be very manageable and doable with your existing laptop, PC# 016272. We have users with Photoshop running on much older laptop and desktop systems with less memory, less hard drive capacity and lower processor speed.
I suspect, again, the performance issue with your laptop may be due to disk space full to near capacity and/or fragmented files, etc. These issues can easily be resolved with a system reload.
Dear HTO IT ~ if you would please reload PC# 016272 for Anucha, it would be most appreciated.