Had an SX 60. Got better results with my older SX 50. Gave the 60 away and have been very happy with a P500. I have not been tempted by the added reach of the 900.
This has been discussed here several times. Most seem to have good results with wharever they buy. I have never seen any mention of damage that was related to the battery brand.
You have been given good advice here. Do your home work but also remember you got the camera to have some fun. Start with it on Auto and see what it will do.
My experience for the past few months has been great. The YouTube videos are good but I would buy a good instruction book when when one is published in English.
Seven year old computer is not what you want to use for working with photos. Time to get a new machine and put Affinity on it.
I think it is clear that anything less than multiple backups in multiple locations is asking for trouble. A free program from Microsoft, SyncToy, that is great for keeping all of the drives up to date. Using a back up program that saves your data in a proprietary file format is ok until some time in the future when you no longer have the program that produced the backup files.
Keep it simple. Back up to at least two external hard drives or one external hard drive and something like Carbonite. For the hard drives use a program like SyncToy (free from Microsoft) that will find new files and add them to the external drive but never remove them even if you delete them from your computer.
If I was making my living with it I have no doubt that I would have a Photoshop subscription. Since I use the program about once per week, Affinity makes sense for me.
My choice for size vs quality is the Panasonic ZS 100. Reasonable zoom, shoots raw and fits in my pocket.
I have an older Epson flatbed scanner that still does a great job with prints, slides and negatives. Any name brand scanner between $100 - $200 will produce excellent jpg files. Also it is handy when you need to make copies or PDF files of documents.
Consider how much you are going to spend using the program. $10 for LR/PS is not that much if you are going to continue to use it on a regular basis every month. For me $40 - $50 to own Affinity Photo forever makes more sense.
One solution for photos that you don't necessarily require to be scanned at maximum quality is a document scanner. When I want a scan that is the best I can do, I use my Epson flatbed scanner or a dedicated 35mm slide scanner. That takes a lot of time. When I have a bunch of old family photos that are of so-so quality and interest, I use my Fujitsu document scanner. I can feed them thru and get a bunch of very reasonable scans in seconds.
This has been discussed several times. I don't remember anybody ever describing any damage caused other than leaving the battery in the camera or flash for a very long time. That applies to any brand of battery.
Does a TC have any advantage over simply cropping the image?
It does seem that your experience with problems with Affinity are not what the majority have experienced. I agree that a delete and reinstall is at least the first step.