[hollerith]

>with a desktop like this that isn't going to be moving frequently

When I owned a Mac mini it moved all the time: I took it on the bus with me to and from my girlfriend's house 100s of times.

(Although it died faster than it would have if I had left it in one place, it did last almost 9 years.)

[coder543]

Obviously using an external drive as your boot drive might not be the best idea in that situation, but that situation does not sound fun at all.

[hollerith]

Commuting by bus in not particularly fun (I assume that that is what you mean, though I'm not sure) but it wouldn't've been any more fun with a Macbook Air than a Mac mini: they weigh about the same, but if I had carried an Air I would have had to carry a charger or buy a second charger to keep at the girlfriend's house. And of course the Air costs more (even after accounting for the cost of the extra monitor, keyboard and mouse I kept at her house).