Instead of traveling hours out-of-state to buy a laptop, how about buying one used, maybe from a pawnshop or a garage sale or one of those one-man-show used computer stores? Its possible that pawnshops have cameras on all the time, but anything in it is likely to be, maybe not "hot", but disowned with extreme prejudice. You'd be putting a cut-out between yourself and the purchase of the laptop.

The Step 5 checklist should include setting a random hardware address for the wireless card or ethernet port. Maybe you can obtain MAC addresses using nmap in one coffee shop, then use them in another shop.

Step 7, get a USB wireless that lets you put a directional antenna with high gain on it, so you can actually be some distance away from the coffee shop, library, etc while you use it.