The one annoyance I have with the boards is that I always feel like the board sticking out off of my Pro Mini, etc. gives a lot of leverage to torque the board and the header solder joints when I'm plugging/unplugging the USB cable or clumsily knocking into the board or yanking on the USB cable. I've never actually had this cause a problem after 6+ years of using them though. The shorter connector on the FTDI cable would not provide so much leverage.
You can get the FTDI cables with the 6 pin connector (as well as the boards) on eBay, Aliexpress, SparkFun, Adafruit, etc.