Mimio: Electronic Whiteboard Substitute

SUMMARY

Mimio PRO: Lightweight, easy-to-use kit for saving whiteboard notes. CON: Cannot convert handwriting to editable text. VALUE: No more expensive and a lot more portable than integrated electronic whiteboards. $499 Virtual Ink 617/623-8387 www.virtual-ink.com

If you attend a lot of brainstorming sessions, you've probably wished for an electronic whiteboard to capture all those precious ideas. But the large ones are pricey, and even compact units, such as MicroTouch's sub-$500 Ibid 100, are heavy and unwieldy.

Virtual Ink's $499 Mimio isn't cheaper than smaller competitive offerings, but it solves the portability problem by retrofitting conventional whiteboards to record scribbles and sketches electronically on a PC. It consists of a folding 28-inch bar (14 by 7 by 2 inches when closed) that weighs under 2 pounds; four color-coded dry-erase marker sheaths; and a pressure-sensitive eraser. The bar holds position-sensing optics and connects by cables to the serial (or Universal Serial Bus) and mouse ports of a PC. The marker sheaths are wired for ultrasonic and infrared transmission. When you write, Mimio detects and records your pen strokes as images you can save for printing or perusal. You use the eraser to make corrections or to wipe out blocks of text.

Setup of an early preproduction unit was remarkably straightforward. The teal-colored bar attached by suction cups to the left side of my 3-by-4-foot office whiteboard. The mechanical kinks I ran into--suction cups giving way unexpectedly, and pens sometimes needing a lot of pressure to activate--should be fixed in the shipping version.

Virtual Ink says that Mimio supports boards as large as 4 by 8 feet and can be used with videoconferencing software, including Microsoft's NetMeeting, to share whiteboard notes remotely.

Mimio would be even more useful if it could convert handwriting to editable text. But if you can't justify the expense of a large electronic whiteboard, or even a smaller one that isn't comfortably portable, Mimio should fit the bill.