...after a long time with Morrowind.

This is going to take some getting used to. I'm all over the place with the control scheme.

Are we able to hotkey right/left hands yet, or are we still stuck clumsily switching between spells and shields or dual weapons? For example, I want to go from unarmed to shield and spell. Do I still have to hit the spell hotkey twice, then the shield hotkey? I'm on PC by the way, so if there are any mods that help with this, please let me know.

As far as I know, there are no real hotkeys. Instead, you favourite items, and you can call upon your favourites menu by one press of the button (it is triangle on PS3, not sure about PC). That way you don't have to switch to your menu constantly.

It's Q on PC, and there are Hotkeys. Numbers 1 - 8. You set them in your favorites menu.

One of the reason I never did dual wielding ( without bound swords) was because unless you had two of the exact same base weapon, you could never get a weapon to "hotkey" to your left hand. Spells default to your left, but a double tap of the same hot key equips the spell in the right hand. Weapons default to your right hand, but double tapping does not equip another weapon in your left hand. It's really wonky.

I usually play Morrowind on my laptop and Skyrim on my gaming PC, I would suggest switiching all the controls of Mooorwind to match those of Skyrim so that doesnt jar you as much...it doesnt work the other way because if you map a key the game desnt recognize that on some menus

Well, I'm done with Morrowind for a while, so I just need to relearn the control schemes. Muscle memory is a b[censored]h, sometimes.