Loaded M4 Mac Mini vs. loaded M4 Macbook Pro?

[oktane]

I've been waiting for a "prosumer" Mac desktop for about 1-2 years now. I've been struggling with an M2 Air as my desktop (with external display) waiting for the M4s to be released.

I'm tired of running out of memory and local drive space. I have a large NAS etc, but a lot of software I use struggles with NAS and even symlinks.

A lot of my 1TB drive is eaten up by "garbage" User files I can't remove, like caches, iMessages attachments, etc. I wish Apple was more efficient at the Users folder and allowed easy external SSD storage for some of this, but if they did I guess they couldn't overcharge for on-board SSD storage.

So now I'm debating a fully-loaded M4 Mac Mini Pro (64GB/8TB) or equivalent M4 MBP (assuming it will be released tomorrow). No idea if there will be an M4 Max chip on the MBP, but if there is I guess I'll go that route since I can't stomach upgrading for another few years. There's no way to get much of your money back on RAM/SSD in the secondary market.

Any suggestions?

Thx

 

[blufrog]

Symlink the User folder to an external drive?

 

[oktane]

You can make a new User and have it on an external SSD, but it requires logging into another local account first then mounting the external drive, then logging into the secondary User account (the one with the exteral SSD Users folder). It works but can be wonky. I did that for a while but got tired of it.

 

[picpicmac]

You can make a new User and have it on an external SSD, but it requires logging into another local account first then mounting the external drive, then logging into the secondary User account (the one with the exteral SSD Users folder). It works but can be wonky. I did that for a while but got tired of it.

Can't you use an external SSD as your boot drive?

 

[oktane]

Can't you use an external SSD as your boot drive?

Not sure, but that would be highly inadvisable in my situation where I use encryption.