the tablet gives you fine control when making selections. With the recent upgrades to PS and LR, the advantages offered by the tablet are lessened, but it is still a convenience.

Slightly used, in mint condition body with original boxes and manuals, vertical grip and three (3) Fujifilm batteries.
$1,500.

The advantage of an external drive that plugs in for power is that it does not draw power from your computers power supply, so it depends how large your power supply is in the computer and what else is plugged into it drawing power. Otherwise, external drives that are powered through the USB connection are fine.

Food for thought. The most expensive cameras in the world have the fewest features. The most important tool for making a good image is the brain.

You might want to rinse it with distilled water while it is wet. This will remove dissolved minerals which are electrically conductive and hence very bad.

The advantage is ease of use. You have greater control in making selections and you can control hardness by applying more or less pressure with the sylus.

I can't be sure, but I recall reading somewhere that the sensor can attract dust more readily with the power on due to electrostatic action.

I used to love photography magazines but I haven't found one worth reading in the past 10 years. They have turned into shills for the advertisers with very few articles of interest. I remember Popular photography in the old days as a magazine that I would read from cover to cover. It had in depth articles that were educational as well as biographical articles on famous photographers. I stopped all my subscriptions in favor of Youtube and other sources.

What hard drive? My first computer did not have a hard drive. It wasn't invented yet. It was an IBM PC with two 5.25 inch floppy drives. One drive was for DOS and the other for data which could hold up to 72MB.

The best camera is the one that makes you want to use it. It might be the tech or the way it feels in your hands. Personally I use Fujifilm because I love the feel of it and the quality of its construction. It makes me want to use it.

that's a new justification. Want to exercise your brain? try expanding the range of possibilities with your current equipment. Have you done focus stacking, astrophotography, still life?

If you want a new camera just do it. You won't take better pictures than with what you have so don't make up excuses to cover for camera lust.

The marginal cost of adding video is minimal, so for those who value it, it's a bargain. For those wo don't, just ignore it. Its all in the solid state chips that cost the same with or without.

I have Luminar 4 and now that Photoshop has sky replacement, find no use for it.

I don't believe that there is any advantage to using plug-ins or stand alone programs for black and white conversion if you have an Adobe subscription. Photoshop Camera Raw and Lightroom use the same processing engine and either can be used to do an excellent job whether you use the presets or not. I routinely use LR. First select Black and White at the top of the developing tools palette, make the initial basic exposure, contrast and texture adjustments, then tweak the individual color sliders to get the desired tonal range. Other than that you can research the myriad methods within PS, but I don't think there is any advantage.