> There are times when you need local processing oomphf,

So have a standard PC at each location you work, rather than a docking 
station and then physically carrying the CPU/GPU/RAM/HD between each 
location. If you need to transfer a large amount of data in the time it 
takes you to move between the two locations, then take a USB stick.

> and even with
> cloud-based services, the size of the planet has not changed.  If you
> save your files to "the cloud" from your home in europe, they'll
> probably reside on a server in Europe.  Stepping off the plane in
> Singapour and trying to work on those files from the hotel will suck.
> Tremendously.

If you're working in a hotel you're going to be carrying a laptop 
anyway, so the device in the OP is not really any advantage. Besides, 
unless every hotel had that exact brand and model of docking station, 
you'd need to carry that too (and a screen).

> One of our customers found this out the hard way a few years ago when
> they tried to offshore part of their engineering dept to India, and
> quickly realized that sharing gigabyte-sized CATIA files between
> North-America and India, every day wouldn't work, simply due to the
> network lag.

You've done something wrong if you have a single gigabyte-sized CATIA 
file. I expect what they had was a large assembly (consisting of a large 
number of much smaller CATIA files) and were attempting to send the 
entire set of files every day. I've worked somewhere before that did 
that between UK and Japan, but the total assemblies were only <20MB so 
it worked ok (apart from the version control problems...).

However, lots and lots companies work on much larger assemblies across 
multiple sites (eg car and plane manufacturers), so this problem has 
been solved already. Even CATIA itself (and various 3rd party software) 
will allow you to only download the sub-assembly you are working on 
(using simplified representations of large sub-assemblies if needed) and 
then upload only the modified parts when you are done.

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