I too use the zoom buttons as well as the fit-to-width/on/off features all the time. I _have_ to. As a toddler I could presumably focus at 5 cm (2 inches), but those days are long gone. Now it's multifocals and all the compromises that follow, there is no way I can hold the tablet screen close enough to read small type. Got to zoom. Got to zoom a _lot_, sometimes, and then the fit-to-width feature comes in so that I don't have to scroll sideways.

As for the target group of the tablets.. ok, here goes:

1) So, lots of the folks here are software developers, according to that user survey (which I haven't read, btw). So, that just shows that the device appeals to the needs of software developers, or, as I rather suspect, to the needs of tech users in an information age. Isn't that OK though? What's wrong with supporting the needs of a large group of people? Maybe we're not the biggest demographic group in the world, but if everything on the market should be specifically made for (and only for) the largest majority then it would be a sad world. It would IMO be wrong if tablets were to be transformed to just yet another entertainment device with some minimal networking capabilities. It wouldn't be a tablet anymore, it would at best be another iphone or some such. That's a crowded market which is just going to get more crowded.

2) Instead, why not make the device an even more attractive option for "our" group? The market is large, even though it's of course not even a fraction of the mega-market of a mobile phone. Where I work there are more folks than just me that owns a tablet, but we're still just about 4-5% of the potential market just in this building. We have networking/information age needs (and that mostly doesn't really include entertainment needs).

3) As a software developer, and all-around tech person, I_still_ enjoyed Krisse's tablet school articles. Many of them were useful for me, also with my background. For one thing it got me up to speed on some of the things much faster, because the articles neatly laid out the parts involved so that I could see the underlying elements right away. (And the articles were beatifully written and a joy to read too.)