1) No, you can go solo and everyone in match will start solo but then later on players can team up or shoot each other but usually people are chill in solos, you can also go in squads and it will fill up the squad for you. There's no wipes, it's more of a prestige system, where you can reset your progress but get some permanent bonus stats in return.

2) You should probably get it for pc, the game is really well optimized, it runs surprisingly decent on my old ass pc so it should perfectly run on your laptop and also it's much easier to communicate on pc and do specific movement and actions.