Ask HN: Do you see tablet as a personal device or a shared family device?

[kennyma]

User behavior between tablet and smartphone is very different and I'm just curious to see how people think about their tablets. Is it a counter top device in your kitchen? Does it sit on your coffee table? do you carry it with you every you go like a smartphone or personal laptop?

Would love to hear your thought.

[bockris]

I was fortunate enough to get a Samsung tablet from Google IO. I wanted to treat it like a shared device and eventually shut off Google Talk and Gmail so my family did not get annoyed by the notification messages when I wasn't using it. I don't like surfing on it (I also didn't like surfing on the iPad that I used for a few weeks.) Google Earth and Google maps are very good on the tablet though. It is basically a game machine now and sits on the coffee table when not charging.

However, I love both of my ChromeOS notebooks. They are completely interchangeable because my wife and kids all have Google accounts. Still slightly underpowered but we get many times the productivity out of the Chromebooks over the tablet.

The Kindle Fire tablets are interesting because they are cheap enough to have individual devices. I want to get one to try but will likely wait until version 2.

Just my $.02, YMMV.

[kennyma → bockris]

Thanks. I personally also get more mileage out of my Chromebook compared to my tablet.

[lylejohnson]

I carry my iPad around with me and it's very much a personal device. It might be a different story if it somehow supported multiple user logins; there have certainly been times when I would like for it to have at least supported a "Guest" account when I wanted to temporarily let someone else play with it.