Smart Board

[MontanaMacster]

Is anybody out there using this in there home setup? My brother just got one of their 72" front projection screens for his 5th grade class. I tried out the touch screen aspect of it to max by fooling around with Photoshop Cs not sure if Smart or any other 3rd party companies offer pressure sensitive stylus type tools for it or not. He said through the education discount (and possibly bulk discount, as the school bought 10 at once) it was only about $1,500. With the price of projectors coming down this looks to be a new purchase for me soon.
Smart Board

 

[Greg_C]

I saw your post and found it interesting. I have several SmartBoards in my school and think they're great. I absolutely love it when my teachers use them as part of class. However, I don't know how practical one would be for personal/home use...you would need a projector as well, and (as far as I know) they are not meant for personal use, so it might be somewhat impractical to use one for Photoshop, as you mentioned. Perhaps you might want to look into something like a Wacom tablet . Or maybe I'm missing something and it would be good for you Just my thoughts...

--Greg

 

[MontanaMacster]

Smart Vs Wacom

Or maybe I'm missing something and it would be good for you

Having a five foot interactive canvas to work on in front of me was the main draw for me. I have messed around with a few wacom tablets but when it comes down to it the largest wacom has a active screen size of 9"H x 12"W, while the smart board is 57 1/2" W × 43" H.

A bastard child of the two, would make for one awesome peripheral.

 

[dvdh]

A research facility that is part of the school of architecture where I teach has been using a smart board with a plasma screen now for a couple years. It is really nice for presentation and marking stuff as you go, but if is that same as the smart board that you are talking about, there is no real control for pressure. The positioning is dictated optically as opposed to tactilely like the wacom tablets, so you can't really 'shade'. That fact would make it rather limiting as a digital canvas. To pick a different saturation / gamma, you would have to go back to palette as opposed to pressing harder. In comparison to the Wacoms, the positioning resolution is not as high either.

Then again, these limitation may provide an acceptable (and maybe even desirable) resistance to the work that you intend to do, so using one might turn out to be quite interesting an rewarding. However I would find you that you can spend some time using before making an financial jumps.

 

[Karpfish]

smart boards are the greatest invention ever! I love using them in school, its always great though because its sensitive to whether or not the eraser and markers are in their place, not to the actual item, so you can draw with both hands or with multiple people at once.its fun