[UncleVanya]

Was anyone else a little surprised that there was no mention of multiuser controls / profiles on the tablet? I'm not sure it's rational to expect that a family would have a 1:1 relationship between tablets and people.

Personally as a family guy with two young kids I need:

1) Multiple accounts and account types
2) Parental Controls to limit use by time of day, content type, etc.
3) ability to sync more than one phone to support #1

These are the areas where existing offerings (iPad) fail and where a company that makes consumer oriented PC's should be keenly aware of.

Luckily this is an area that could be covered in future software updates - it isn't a hardware problem.

Does anyone else think this would be useful and maybe a differentiator if HP could pull it off before launch?

[rickys239]

It would make sense to do something like this but I don't think HP will be able to do so.

[Rennat]

Not really, because the TouchPad is more of a Personal device. Where as the Desktop is a station for multiple people in the family, work, exc..

[UncleVanya]

Not really, because the TouchPad is more of a Personal device. Where as the Desktop is a station for multiple people in the family, work, exc..

Uhmmmm... ok. Why? What makes it a more Personal device than a laptop or desktop? What method for locking it and keeping it out of my kids hands when I'm not looking have I been given? I'll guess the pin lock is available but it's clumsy and painful compared to fingerprint or gesture based methods of unlocking.

[mosdl]

From what I gathered, one Palm profile will support multiple accounts - so you have you pre3 account, your pad account, etc. Unclear if that means multple accounts per device to do what you are thinking

[CMercs]

I concur, i actually found this post because i was looking for an answer. I am also a family man and am looking more at the TouchPads (and all pads) as "coffee table" media consumption devices that double as occasional "outside the home" presentation or note taking devices.

I anticipate them spending the majority of their time in exhibition mode, playing music, showing pictures etc. and the rest of their time acting as a remote control, web surfing, game playing, telephone.

What i don't want is to have this device synchronize data with my phone or my families phone. What if I have a Pre3, wife has a Pre2, kids have Veers. Does all of our data end up on the TouchPad? Or does HP expect me to buy a TouchPad for everyone in the house (I'm sure that is their hope, but it's an unrealistic one).

Now i do understand that my need is different then the college student with a Pre3 and a TouchPad who would want full synchronization. I think HP should support both scenarios. Basically a full sync and an individual data sync, possibly allowing individual profiles that we can log into and out of.

[rpiatt]

My kids are too yound to use this regularly, but this could seriously become my wife's main computing device. I think it could be my main supplemental computing device.

That said, with two yound kids in day care, I'll have a hard time getting two of them approved. :-) So multiple users would be a great idea.

[rot]

for a "coffee table" tablet just create a new profile for the touchpad.

I'm pretty sure I will do just that.

At these cheap app prices, it doesn't matter if I have to buy some apps twice then...

[theclares]

I agree with the sentiment of this post. My wife and I both have sprint Pre's and will be looking to upgrade this year and purchase a tablet (hopefully a TouchPad) this summer. Having the ability for both of us to be able to Tap to Share would be preferable. I am sure there would be other benefits to having both of our profile able to synch with the device as well, like either of us being able to answer calls or texts that come through to our phones while they are charging and we are both being couch potatoes watching TV with our TouchPad beside us.

[HenryAlan]

I also envision a one touchpad for the family scenario. What would be great is an independent profile, along with a bump to login ability. By default it's the family profile, but either my wife or I can take it over with our respective profile by bumping. A device like that would be a definite purchase, but I'm less inclined to buy one if we have to settle for just hers, mine, or a neutral profile.

[Skippy07]

We have three palm profiles in our household (four when our daughter is home from school), so it would be nice to have one TouchPad and each of us could sign into our profiles, and have our own apps, e-mail accounts, settings, etc. while we're using the TouchPad. That's what I was hoping for, but I'm betting, at least in the begining, it will be just one profile per TouchPad.

[Kupe]

Multi-account tablets is an excellent idea. I hope HP and other tablet manufacturers add in this capability.

[jdevora]

Having the option to configure the TochPad with Multiple profiles is definitely a good idea.
A smart-phone is a personal device, but a Tabled is more a family device

I going to send a feature request to Palm via Feedback & Feature Requests | Palm USA

Cheers
JD

[retroblu]

they could implement something like they have on there Touch Smart machines, but have you use your phone to log in after its been paired w/ a profile.

Now would you want persistent profile data stored on the machine or sync everytime you launch a profile?

One thing that would be cool would be apps, those can be persistent and depending on if you have that app on your phone its available across multiple profiles instead of having multiple installs of the same app(but then again, im assuming they will have specific apps for the TouchPad) and maybe even contacts

[emc2trooper]

OP: That's a great idea. I think a nice solution would be to store the data on the TouchPad, but just "open" the content on the profile being used. Imagine having different profiles, each one having settings, and when a user logins (with the touch to share feature, for example), one profiles gets active, showing the apps on the phone, and hiding the other ones, etc.

[iamhives]

I agree with the OP - this is a big deal for me. Limiting a tablet to one user is very short sighted and if HP could figure this out this would be a big advantage over the Ipad etc. With the concept of Touch to Share its almost a requirement since people obviously will each have their own phones and to use the feature in a multi user environmernt the concept of 'accounts' on the Touchpad is required.

[alvaro_qc]

It would be nice to have a "Tap to Sign" feature: Just touch the TouchPad with your webOS phone and you will log with your phone's profile. To log out just open the system menu and select "Sign out".

[cobrakon]

Well you have to think there is a reason that this has not been "done" yet. Think of all the highly skilled R&D departments that are banging away at their respective tablet OS's. Sure it sounds great on paper but a tablet is NOT a pc. I would guesstimate that even an ancient PC nowadays has at least a 160GB hard drive on it. With 64GB as a ceiling, once you start taking about 100's of emails x4, 100's of photos x4, dozens of videos x4, dozens of apps x4, 100's of songs times x4, you are seriously running out of room.

Then you have the additional security of now partitioning or sandboxing the user data profiles from each other and ensuring that no one can crack open terminal and start digging into other profiles. Then there's the licensing and DRM concerns for content on the device. If I download a game from my profile\purchase in-game content, and my daughter buys the same game on her profile with different in-game content, is it downloaded twice? (impacting storage) Or is it downloaded once, but has to be in a common space accessible by two profiles yet sandboxed from the accounts themselves (less secure)

Then you could say only one profile per device, but if you've ever doctored your phone, you know pulling all that data from the cloud takes a decent amount of time and is a significant draw on the bandwidth and power\cpu consumption.

This is an intriguing idea but it just does not seem feasible.

[QuadForce]

It would be very slick if it could read your fingerprints and prompt you to login to your profile.

[danktuft]

An easy way to get around email privacy when using the Touchpad as a 'coffee table' device (as I intend to) would be to password protect individual mail client apps, same with Facebook, same with most apps really. I wonder if that could be done? Either multiple instances of a the Twitter app Twitter1, Twitter2 etcor use of separate clients as a workaround Tweetcast for dad, Tweetdeck for mum etc but all password protected.