Review on MimioTeach Smart Board by Ashwin Patel

I must have been spoiled going from SmartBoards to Mimio, which outperform me in almost every way. Mimio's technology is handy: the pen uses a standard platter and emits a quiet buzz as you write (due to the pressure-sensitive tip), and the device uses the speed of sound to triangulate the position of the pen. Careful! But these pens are very, very fragile. They are prone to breakage, especially in the critical area of the tip, due to the brittle plastic they are made of. Once this part breaks, it becomes useless until you spend about eighty dollars on a new pen. Software is another problem. The SmartBoard "Notebook" software had so many more features than the Mimio notebook that I essentially use the Mimio as a glorified whiteboard (with roughly stored notebooks). The software is also buggy, often duplicating the toolbar, giving you two sets of palettes, but only one works, and closing a toolbar often removes both. The aspect ratio sometimes switches to widescreen mode literally in the middle of a notebook file, and there's no other way to stop this than restarting the software. Another issue is the cartoonish version of the Mimio Touch Bar, which projects over your laptop and obscures the left edge. There's no other way to get rid of that big icon (which doesn't make sense) other than trying a reboot or possibly running multiple versions of the laptop's software. Very inconsistent and annoying. Finally, the design of the pen case is such that it charges the pen when not in use, which is a positive. But you have to put the pen tip in the reservoir, which leads to an accidental click almost every time, often with undesirable results (turning to another page in a notepad, switching tools, etc.). If Mimio works, it works. Well, albeit with bare laptop software. But beware of a fragile pen and a buggy notebook.