ēno interactive whiteboard

No relation to Brian Eno.

The people in our Houston office decided to buy three of these "interactive whiteboards":

http://www.polyvision.com/ProductSolutions/enointeractivewhiteboard/tabid/157/Default.aspx

It's mostly just a whiteboard; also a magnet board, which seems nice; and also, it's anoto-dotted, which means that each point of the surface has tiny markings which a special pen (with a tiny camera in the tip) can see, so the pen can know "where" on the board it's writing at the time.

So you hang this board up, and then shine a projector on it whenever you feel like doing something digital.  You use their bluetooth pen at those times.

There are some significant hurdles for something like this to succeed.

They speak highly of their durable surface (lifetime guarantee, etc. etc.), but I wonder how it REALLY holds up.  No, but REALLY.  If the the bluetooth pen stops being able to see the tiny dots properly, the game stops.  How many times can you accidentally write on this surface with a permanent Sharpie and get it clean again?  Those dots really are tiny.

Another question: how does the projector get calibrated so it can register physical space (inches on the board) against pixel space?  Does the machine driving the projector need some software?  Does said software work on Mac? On *nix?  Does it have a cumbersome installer?

I guess all these questions roll up into one fundamental usability (and sociality) question: will people ever turn on the projector, after some initial honeymoon period?  Or does the ēno just default to being an expensive whiteboard?