Hmm. Well right now for less than $100/month most people posting on this board can get unlimited data connections one way or another. For reasons of battery life most of those people don't leave that connection up 24 hours a day. As time go on, devices will suck less power, power saving software will get better and hopefully battery tech will improve. And of course cellular and wimax networks are expanding, not shrinking, so more and more areas will have this capability.

On the other hand, I have never in my life seen the dock you describe. Instead I see net cafes and courtesy computers in hotel lobbies, both with hi-speed internet connections. Maybe things will change but storing data "in th cloud" seems to be the coming paradigm, not keeping all your data on one piece of physical media.

-John