And, of course, that's what every budget-conscious, entry-level user needs in a Mini.
Exactly the point that a lot of posters across this mini forum seem to ignore.
Many mini owners are people spending $500 to $700 on a computer. All this talk about stupidly expensive CTO OEM SSDs, RAM and Apple TB displays is just not in the world of thrifty mini owners.
One can find lots of great USB3 storage for reasonable prices. Unfortunately the mini does not have enough USB ports to support a keyboard and mouse and iPhone, and iPad and EyeTV and CF card reader and printer ad nauseam.
So an expensive TB dock is supposed to be a cure for that? Hardly. I use a supper great OWC ThunderBay 4 TB dock loaded with WD 4TB RE drives with my mini. At $449.00 for an empty one it is not much competition for USB3 boxes.
Finally the talk about eGPU. For a fiddler and hobbyist definitely a cool project. Buying a TB PCI box, a dGPU and pounding a bunch of instructions into Terminal for someone buying their first Mac? Come on, please return to reality.