I'd rather not tether either, it can drain a battery pretty quick. However, I think we can agree that a tablet won't replace a phone for most people. So most will be carrying a phone as well. Places where you have power and don't need to be mobile (car, office, home, etc) tethering isn't a problem.

I'd love a shared data plan. Even a pay-as-you-go data plan would be great. However, as far as I can tell choices for that are limited and not very appealing here in the US. AT&T buying T-Mobile leaves a lot of questions as well. So which carrier to go with for best data price/longevity. Or just deal with tethering until thing stabilize.

The carriers would be smart to offer some decent pre-paid data plans.

That aside, Samsung may be missing the boat here. Trying to sell a prevoius generation wifi-only tablet, may be a loosing proposition due to internal competition. Why buy a $350 dollar tablet when for a $100 more, I can get much better hardware in a sleeker package? Not to mention there should be some decent tablets with newer hardware at 7" as well coming soon. A wifi 2nd gen Tab "Tab2" at that price point could gooble up some serious market share, they have an established history and presence going for them.

I'm starting to wonder if Samsung isn't trying to determine what the upper size limit for tablets is. Not much real difference between 8.9 and 10.1. I can't think of a significant advatage one way or the other. The larger screen size just doesn't seem like it would make a large difference. On the other hand the difference between 7" and 8.9/10.1 could be very significant.