Hitachi announces StarBoard FX 77 Duo multi-touch whiteboard

While the jury's still out on the potential dangers of whiteboards (really), Hitachi is fearlessly forging ahead with its StarBoard line of big-screen interactive displays, with the company today announcing its 77-inch FX 77 Duo model (the non-Duo FX 77 is pictured above). The big selling point here is the board's support for dual inputs, which will let you get a taste of that multi-touch business everyone is so big on these days. Otherwise, the board looks to be a fairly standard affair, with 24 customizable buttons included to keep your presentations running smoothly, and software provided to remotely link up to 50 of the whiteboards together. While there's no official word on a price from Hitachi just yet, at least one retailer appears to be taking orders for them right now for $1,600.

[joegibes @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:57PM]

This looks nice... At my school we have smartboards (they're large whiteboard-sized touch-sensitive screens that are used with a projector), but they're not multitouch.
You can really screw with someone if you keep touching the board while they're trying to draw (lol).

http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/Front+Projection/600+Series/Default.htm

[K- @ Oct 2nd 2007 5:20PM]

Yea, we have these at my school too, they're quite fun, especially when your physics teacher is a hilariously sarcastic brit

[Chase @ Dec 27th 2008 2:02PM]

yeah, same at my school. the pens are connected to the pc by bluetooth and i can detect them on my cell phone and when you try to connect to them they stop working for like 30 seconds, which is hilarious when the teacher is writing.

[Mike Klein @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:12PM]

I would prefer a system using OneNote and tabletPCs instead. OneNote at least lets you create shared workspace with concurrent live edits.

[Matthew McGuirl @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:44PM]

Captain Kangaroo's magic drawing board FTW!

[oshean @ Oct 2nd 2007 2:00PM]

If it comes with 'Mortimer Ichabod Marker' then I'm buying!

[pcgecko85 @ Oct 2nd 2007 2:20PM]

Hitachi donated 3 of these to my university. They are pretty nice, awesome for tablet like programs.

[Ryan P @ Oct 2nd 2007 2:47PM]

The year 2000 called, and it wants it's proprietary deadend hardware back.

[Ron Smith @ Oct 2nd 2007 6:30PM]

Starcraft 2 + this= gold

[squirrelking @ Jun 5th 2008 11:37AM]

Don't forget your wrist mounted keyboard!