Great additional info!

I am unsure about the limit of total CA's that could be in existance, but based on this quote from the linked @steemitblog post, I'm thinking we need not worry about 'maxing out':

Pending claimed accounts are not transferable to other users, but they do not expire, and there is no limit on how many an account can hold. (Well, technically speaking there is a limit of 9,223,372,036,854,775,806, but we do not expect anyone to reach it anytime soon.)

I have also seen, and spoken with, a couple of accounts that are running auto-claim scripts. I guess when your SP is in the 100's of thousands, this will save plenty of time going forward.

Costs have certainly rose, and it's something like $1500 at the current price of STEEM if you want to buy enough SP to start claiming an account every 3/4 days.

Comments on my linked post from October, and one here on this post, suggest that folks are not happy with this.

I've yet to find a place where you can securely create accounts from the claims, without the need to know any code. I was hoping SteemConnect would add this to their list of tools, as they have with the Claim Account page.

Thanks for the review and the extra chart, can never have enough of those :D