Also... it seems to me that using 2 screens just to overcome the current modal nature of tablet applications (that have been upscaled from smaller devices where modal makes more sense) isn't the way to solve the multi-tasking problem (reading and writing at the same time).

An iPad is still good for that, the screen real estate is enough to do the job... once the slate computer gets beyond a certain size the modality is what needs addressing.

Perhaps move to a, erm... windows approach or more likely... a tiling app manager so that 2 apps run side-by-side on the existing single tablet.

Seems weird to overcome a current (and probably temporary) software constraint with a hardware approach.