Hmmm, that's disappointing to hear. So now back to my question: what if you keep the OS on the internal SSD and then put the home drive on the external SSD, done this way:I update my first post in this thread to reflect this, but here is what was just discovered about a major limitation by Apple if you Boot off an external drive as your Startup Drive on your Mac:
WARNING I was not aware of previously: If you boot off an external Startup Drive with your Mac, due to Apple's New Security, you can NOT run Apple Intelligence, and likely Apple Pay, and other security related things from your external Thunderbolt or SSD drive. See this video from a guy who just discovered this limitation:

How to move the Home Directory in macOS Ventura
In macOS Ventura you can move your user's Home directory to a larger or faster external drive. Here's how.

Will that retain the full functionality, while allowing the offloading of the major data hogging info to the external drive?