Mega 12ft interactive electro-whiteboard lures GTC12 punters While wandering the exhibit floor at GTC12, my attention was captured by what looked like a massive (12ft x 4ft, 3.66m x 1.22m) electronic whiteboard with fast-moving screens portraying information in lots of different forms. Each window was being created, resized, moved, then closed at high speed without lag or distracting …
.but...two issues.
First up ineractive white board are nothing new and there are good ones out there, my kids school & nursery has some brilliant ones that they use the cbeebies website for, (as well as proper education)
2nd and a big issue, for which we've rejected boards in the past, you are locked to the software and calibration.
We were pretty much offered some for free by a vendor. The catch? You need to install the software on each pc that uses it (so how do you do this for visitors?) and calibrate the pen. The real issue was it had to be calibrated every time a different pc used it. So if Joe went in, spent 10 mins calibrating, the Fred went in an calibrated his, the next time Joe went in, he'd have to calibrate again.
You also say it uses "standard" projectors, fine, but do you realise the running costs of replacing bulbs on 6 cameras would be! That where they make the money on these buggers.
So it seems good in theory, but like to see it in the real world before I decide.
"2nd and a big issue, for which we've rejected boards in the past, you are locked to the software and calibration."
They would like you to believe that, truth is most that i have dealt with in the past were standard HID devices that worked better if you just used the default MS driver and avoided the crappy branded attempt by the vendor.
As for the software well one company i used to deal with was peddling shockwave based shite with "state of the art" hand writing recognition (it was the bundled OS xp tablet edition which did it all) suffice to say i pissed off the salesgoit by pissing over his upgrade demo by opeing up MS one note (which every pc in the college had due to site license) and demoing the impossible feature of copy and paste into word, the college i worked for still went ahead and bought the crapware but then when does the technically informed get veto of purchases when the thick as pig shit so say manager gets suckered by sales speak, and free vendor branded jellybeans????
In case you haven't guessed i no longer work in education...
If you look at the amount of horsepower they have it is really inefficient.
Xig's (Xi Graphics) multihead stuff is amazing when you consider how low powered most of the hardware is.
And they use X (Xorg has its problems only because they are doing at wrong as far as I can see).
(2D basic work nicer on Xig with a Radeon 7500 than on a Quadro 3600M)
(Obviously the Quadro's resolution is higher).
I am just a customer don't work for them or have any other dealings with them.
I don't even get how it is possible..
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