[ONE General] LiquidSolstice:
Thoughts and opinions imply that you have something new to add to the table. Clearly, the amount of complaining about the lack of MicroSD slot have been made very, very abundantly clear, so let me ask you this; what are you adding to the discussion in any meaningful way by continuously telling us all how bad of a decision it was for OP to make their phone like this? Are you not engaging in the same "disregarding other people's usage patterns" that you accuse them of? I'm not taking one side over the other, I'm just saying that posts like these are no better than the ones they intend to attack.

There is a distinction here; yes, you want all your media on your device and that seems reasonable to you. No, other people do not care enough about large storage capacities to have all their media on their device. These are two separate camps, but there's the thing; as far as this phone goes, the decision has already been made. These phones are in their post-production, and will not change. It seems unlikely that it will change, seeing as Google's ideal vision of their device (the Nexus series) has not had a MicroSD card in a long, long time, and there is a list of problems that application developers must deal with whenever they have to code for devices with MicroSD cards, even if they have no use for the extended storage.

There is literally nothing you can do to get this phone with a MicroSD slot. Nothing. At all. (Unless you want to get an Oppo Find 7 which is similar enough).

Therefore, constantly whining (yes, whining) about how this affects your decision here is worthless. What does it do? Establish your opinion? Is it that important that the forum know there is yet another person who genuinely needs an SD card slot? I mean if it is, by all means, feel free.

The nature of CM has been discussed plenty, but I'll catch you up on it. (Take the tone of the rest of this post as informational, not directed at you in any way).

CyanogenMod started taking out features as they started to focus more on expanding to as many devices as possible rather than having fewer devices with a ton of customization. Once they decided they wanted to go corporate, they had to take out several features and pare down their current features because if you want to be granted a license by Google to include the Google Apps suite commercially on a device, you MUST pass Google's Compatibility Test Suite (CTS). This is why you must flash Gapps separately, and ROM makers are not allowed to include GApps in ROMs that did not come with them (this is why XDA allows stock-based ROMs to contain Gapps).

Being rooted is an INSTANT fail, and several other features which subvert security and stability guidelines for the sake of tweak options are also an instant fail. Open source hacking inside Android's source code is a lot of fun and we all benefit from it, but often those hacks and modifications are not compliant.

Then they must make sure they meet all the requirements present in the Android Compatibility Definition Document (ACDD). Building and selling an Android device commercially is not something you do overnight.

The CM you once used to know is not and will never be the same again. When they decided to leave the world of hobbyists and power users, and chose to start playing with the big boys of Android, they had to make these decisions.

CM11S is a far cry from the stuff you and I normally think of when we flash nightly builds of ROMs. They need to be hardened, stable, compliant, and secure. There is no doubt on anyone's mind that you'll be able to root it yourself, but the default software that comes with it will be just like an HTC Sense ROM or a Samsung TouchWiz ROM, just with a different look (and a different/reduced set of applications).