As far as your first question, yes it works pretty much the same. As for your second question, that's also yes but it does involve a few steps. But instead of exporting your Thunderbird contacts directly into her tablet, you really should think about what Bg260 already suggested and use Google Contacts as your primary contacts manager. With Google Contacts, you'll always have all your contacts backed up to into your online Google account so unless you also already have a solid back up solution in place for your laptops, that will be done automatically for you. Also it will be easier to keep your Google Contacts in sync, again automatically, with both your tablet and your Windows laptops. At any time you can then access your contacts list by either using your tablet, your laptops, or any computer in you log into your Google account.
To export the contacts in your Thunderbird application into Google Contacts, go into the 'Address Book' in Thunderbird, in the upper toolbar select the 'Tools' menu and then 'Export...' An export box will pop up and towards the bottom there's a file format selection. Try using Comma Separated (UTF-8). Give it a unique name and the resulting file will be
your_file_name.csv.
Now on one of your laptops, open up a browser, and go to
https://contacts.google.com and log into your account. In the left side panel click on 'More' and when a contextual menu drops down select 'Import'. Follow the directions to import that
your_file_name.csv file you made previously and import all those contact entries. You will probably need to weed through some duplicates and tidy up a few things but once it's done you should have a contacts listing that you can now use as your 'master' source.
On your tablet, check that in your Settings >> Accounts >> Google >>
your_email_address@gmail.com has the 'Sync Contacts' box enabled. Hit the 'Sync now' button to force your contacts list to import. When done, the Contacts app on your tablet should reflect what you see in the
https://contacts.google.com browser window on your laptop. Your email app, texting app, and other apps should just feed off of whatever is in your Contacts app.
Back to Thunderbird on your laptop, install the 'gContactSync' addon into Thunderbird.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/gcontactsync/?src=ss
Go to the 'Tools' menu, select 'Add-ons', and in the upper right search box type in 'gcontactsync' and it should show up in the results. Click on the 'Install' button. The gContactSync settings are pretty extensive so be sure NOT to just follow the defaults. You want whatever is in your Google Contacts to overwrite whatever is in Thunderbird for the initial setup, keeping your online Google Contacts listing as your 'master'. When that's done, then confirm the settings are to keep things in sync automatically.
At this point hopefully you can change contact info on either you tablet, your laptop, or just logging into your Google account with any computer and any additions, deletions, or edits you make will then show up on the others.
