Penguin Marginalia - gadget: "boogie board" (terrible name but eh)

http://www.myboogieboard.com/

Does anyone remember these things? Pressure-sensitive LCD tablets, which only use power when erasing, so last for years. There was a fuss about them a while ago, January or February. For some reason I remembered their existence recently and ordered one, and it arrived today - well, all right, a note saying that I had to pay £12.02 extra to get it arrived today (£4.02 duty, £8 Post Office handling charge :mad: ).



It's smaller than I thought it would be, A5-ish, and weighs pretty much nothing, an ounce or two. It is also much, much dimmer than you'd imagine. I took the photo with my iPhone outside, and you can see from how it's washed out my hand that it whacked the exposure way up. You basically need quite strong light to see it at all, the contrast is really annoyingly low. The pictures on their site where it's practically glowing really aren't accurate.

It's very sensitive, and the width increases dramatically with even slight pressure - the very minimum line is about 0.5mm, just slightly touching it with a fingernail, and writing you're producing lines at least 1mm wide and usually more. Resting your hand on it will also produce odd spots. (This probably means it's a bit pointless in a bag, unless you have a sleeve, which I don't.) You can't partially erase it either - all you can do is press the erase button which resets everything.

There's no save or export function. Take a picture on your phone. Having said that, the above picture came out quite well. No idea if it scans, probably not well since the top bit is slightly raised.

It comes with a microfibre cloth and a stylus, which is decent enough but has no way of being attached to the board - bit of a design flaw.



It's quite fun to write and doodle on the thing, the pressure sensitivity makes it interesting, and it might be useful for taking phone notes, drawing little sketch diagrams, the sort of thing where it would just be a waste to use paper. The poor contrast is annoying though. You have to use it in a bright area, and you can't point a light straight at it either as you get a diffuse reflection from the surface. And it must be said that I *do* have a lot of paper, and pens, too. Still, it is a fun thing for people who come round to play with I suppose.