Storage Advice for a new Laptop

Some users will use the option to "Store a Copy of all originals" as a backup of their cloud-based images, although that's probably not why the option was initially made available. I personally don't use that option, as I regard it as an imperfect backup (i.e. no edits or added metadata are stored with the local copy), so instead I use the option to store all Smart Previews locally. I find the SPs generally good enough performance-wise, and I accept the delay if I zoom to 1:1 when editing if the automatic download of the original hasn't yet finished. I personally would never consider a complete laptop upgrade just to allow me to store a copy of all my cloud originals on the system drive. I'm usually easily persuaded that I need to upgrade something, but that "excuse" wouldn't really do it in this instance.

Another approach could be to change the download location from your system drive to an external hard drive, giving you the space to maintain a permanent download of all the originals. The problem with trying to manage within the restrictions of a 256GB hard drive is that even with that "Store a copy...." option unchecked, the way Lightroom works can lead to quite a large number of locally-stored originals, so I have that location set to an external drive (and I have a 1TB system drive). That works fine unless you want to go mobile with the laptop and take the local originals with you, as that would mean taking the external drive as well.