A canvas for big ideas

AS THE OFFICE WORKER diasporaincreases because of telecommuting,organizations are looking closely atways to make the collaborationprocess easier and more productive.To that end, the GCN Lab testedthree whiteboard systems that let youmake presentations and collaboratewith a group contained within a conferenceroom while including farflungemployees via the Web, usingconferencing tools such as WebEx orNetMeeting. All of the systems in thisreview cost less than $3,000. The products were tested using aToshiba conference room projectorand a laptop PC. All the whiteboards,however, had the same flaw.You have to step in front of the projectorto write on the board, andyour shadow blocks what you'rewriting. Some people in the audiencecould miss part of your presentation.That's the price you pay to achieve whiteboardtechnology at this relatively lowcost. You could invest in something moreexpensive, such as a rear projection systemor a large plasma touch screen, butthen you are talking about an initial investmentthat will be much more than$3,000.Of the three interactive whiteboardswe tested, Panasonic's InteractivePanaboard gave us the best collaborativeexperience, in both the physical world ofpaper and ink markers and the virtualworld of computer screens and digitalink. With a Panaboard, projector, conferenceroom and laptop, you can sendyour collaborative efforts to thePanaboard's built-in printer or to theends of the Earth.The Panaboard can operate as a standardwhiteboard or interactive digitalboard, equipped with an electronic penand software. The Panaboard's softwarelets you click on an icon of a whiteboard,which enables standard whiteboard features,or a projector, which launches itselectronic pen and digital features.It's a large board, measuring 54.6inches high and 61 inches diagonally.It's available on a stand withwheels, so you can move it fromroom to room or mount it on awall.Setup was fairly easy. You installthe software and connect thewhiteboard to your laptop via aUSB connection. Connect the projectorto your laptop, hit Function+ F4, and you are ready to collaborate.[IMGCAP(1)]The Panaboard comes with anelectronic pen that also holds areal-ink Expo market pen inside,so you can toggle back andforth between the physical anddigital whiteboard worlds. Italso has an eraser that can erasedigital images from the interactivewhiteboard and real ink images from thestandard whiteboard. At times, theboundaries between the two worlds, digitaland real, got a little blurry. It's probablyeasier to work only with one or theother at a time.What distinguishes the Panaboard isits built-in printer. Sometimes you don'twant to wait to e-mail the results of yourcollaborative brilliance ' you want aprintout right then and there. The museis fickle; it alights quickly and flies awayeven faster. Think of some of the greatcollaborators in history: Marie and Pierre Curie, James Watsonand Francis Crick, Gilbert andSullivan. Do you think theywould want to have to savetheir ideas as a JPEG and emaila PowerPoint presentationto one another? Rather, theywould more likely prefer a hardcopy printout of their ideas assoon as possible. True collaboration,I think, would benefitgreatly from having this immediate,tangible record of ideas,processes and results.To that end, the Panaboarddoubles as a giant scanner. Press a buttonnear the built-in printer, and thePanaboard scans everything you'vewritten on the whiteboard, creating afile you can save, send or print directlyto the built-in printer. The Panaboardcan print a black-and-white copy ontostandard paper, and itspaper tray holds as manyas 100 sheets, ample fordistributing notes toeveryone in a midsizeconference room.The print quality is legibleand definitely adequatefor most conferenceand classroompurposes. ThePanaboard also has anon-screen keyboard thatlets you type numbers orletters on the whiteboardscreen. And it has handwritingrecognition capabilitiesthat can translateyour handwritingwith the electronic peninto text.Like all of the whiteboards testedhere, the Panaboard software installs afloating on-screen palette of pens,tools and other features. You can usethe electronic pen to click on the digitalink color or feature you want to use.It lets you modify colors and adjust thethickness and opacity of the line.The Panaboard lets you save yourpresentation and collaboration effortsas a movie, so you can easily review allyour changes. By clicking on a red doton the on-screen features toolbar, itrecords all your markings and annotations.You can save that file, e-mail it orpost it on a Web site.The electronic pen andthe whiteboard work togetherthrough ultrasonicand infrared technologiesto sense the pen's locationon the screen, said BobCurci, Panasonic productmanager. We tested thePanaboard with all majoroffice applications, suchas Microsoft PowerPointand Excel. You can open aPowerPoint presentation,mark it up on the whiteboardand save it as amovie, a JPEG image or anew presentation. Or youcan write, scan and printyour presentation withouteven connecting to acomputer.The dual worlds the Panaboard comfortablyinhabits ' physical and virtual' make it a worthy contender forany enterprise whiteboard. The instantgratification of the print button alsogives it an edge for whiteboard shoppers.THE SMART TECHNOLOGIES SB680interactive whiteboard is not kiddingabout being a smart board. TheSmartBoard and its pen tray have smartsbuilt right into them. They use infraredsensors and analog resistive technology todetect the pen's position on the board. Thewhiteboard comes with four plastic pensor styli, in red, blue, green and black thatfit into a pen tray in a corresponding color.The intellectual prowess of the boardmore than makes up for the lack of smartsin the pens. Their colors might be bright,but these pens are anything but. Andthat's by design. Don't be fooled by theword pens. These styli are inkless. Theyget their cues from Smart's Notebooksoftware and the infrared sensors embeddedin the pen tray and board. The Smart-Board is different in that 'there's nothingspecial about the pens,' said Gary Waliszewski,regional manager of SmartTechnologies federal systems group.Other interactive whiteboards are stylusdriven,he said. If you lose the stylus, theboard won't work. With the Smart Board,you're not drawing with the blue pen, theboard senses that the blue pen is out of itsholder, so your writing is blue.[IMGCAP(2)]Replacing all four Smart styli costs about$13. In a pinch, you could use dry-erasemarkers such as the Expo markers thatship with other products. You can even useyour finger instead of a pen, by clicking onthe on-screen palette of pen colors andtools that comes with the software, whichships with every Smart product. Theboard's embedded analog resistive technologyresponds to the user's touch.Like the Panaboard, the SB680 can beset up on a stand with wheels or mountedon a wall. Assembly was basically thesame as for the Panaboard. Connect thewhiteboard to your laptop via a USB connection,and connect a projector to yourlaptop via a video input jack. The SB680was the largest whiteboard we tested,measuring 77 inches diagonally.All three whiteboards in this reviewrequire you to calibrate the screen withyour projector so that the mouse, penand keyboard all alignproperly. The Smart-Board also comes with anorientation screen, whichprompts you to press targetson the four corners ofthe screen and center sothat it aligns correctly.Everything you write onthe SmartBoard becomesan object you can move,copy and flip. Like thePanaboard, it works withPowerPoint and other popularoffice applications.The SmartBoard also givesusers access to the SmartWeb site, from which theycan download free graphics,images and sounds.The SmartBoard on-screen toolbar offeredthe best variety of pen widths andstyles of the three whiteboards. It offereda crazy pen of rainbow colors and also astamp feature that would let you stampimages onto your presentation. Like thePanaboard, the SmartBoard lets youchoose to use it in a nonprojector mode asa regular whiteboard. It also can translateyour handwriting into textand numbers and lets yousave your presentation as aQuickTime movie. Itcomes with an eraser that,like the Panaboard's, doublesas an ink eraser and adigital eraser.Another plus for theSmartBoard is that it'sbeen field-tested forruggedness, which makesit popular among militarypersonnel. 'We had a unitin the original DesertStorm,' Waliszewski said.'It took a bullet, and it'sstill operating.'Loaded with features,easy to use and hard todestroy, the SB680 would be a great interactivechoice for K-12 or GS-12. [IMGCAP(3)]