3*(N+1) Devices for N People

At my house we are trending towards having N+1 laptops for N people, because (a) I need to keep my work laptop separate from my home laptop, and (b) frequently everyone in the family wants to use their laptops at the same time.

The same goes for tablets, and when the kids are old enough to have phones I expect it will be the same for phones.

I tried using multi-user accounts on shared family tablets and laptops, but ended up assigning each kid their own devices. It was simpler from an account management point of view, and the kids like personalizing their devices with stickers and cases.

Having assigned devices also makes it easier to give different Internet and gaming privileges to different kids, depending on age and maturity.

A downside of assigned devices is that not all the devices have the same features. People complain about hand-me-down devices, as well as the perverse incentive created when an accidentally broken device is replaced by a brand new, better device.


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