I actually don't think there is much of a market for tablets right now. I think there is a market for iPads. People don't say, "I want a tablet and the iPad is the best one". They say "I want an iPad".

Perhaps as people's computers get old they will seek to replace them with only a tablet. When/if that happens alternatives to the iPad will be a bigger market (that doesn't mean the iPad can't still be dominant).

I don't think this will have any effect on the proliferation of tablets. It's obvious that they will be around and companies will continue to go after market share.

Perhaps, but this is with the assumption that the $499 inexpensive model is the most popular. A research report from Context showed that the best selling iPad 2 model is the 64GB 3G model, i.e. the most expensive one.

http://gigaom.com/apple/most-popular-ipad-2-model-is-also-th...

These are still early days. Extrapolating from ratios of market shares all under 1% is problematic at best.

I've thought about buying the iPad keyboard and turning my linux box (an older dell) into a server where I can ssh into for coding. I ultimately decided against it because multitasking at the time didn't exist, although it was coming. Even with multitasking, it isn't as easy as on a desktop, although the new 4 finger swipe might mitigate that somewhat. Ultimately I can't rely on iOS Safari to render and execute javascript as well as the desktop counterpart, so I don't see myself doing this any time soon.