I love whiteboards. Love them, love them, love them. I love looking at the possibilities of a blank one. I love looking at thoughts scribbled all over one and figuring out what to do with it. I love the smell of markers. Sometimes a little too much. Please make me stop if you catch me smelling them during a workshop. Kidding! Kind of.

Anyway… So one of my clients has one of these very fancy electronic whiteboards. I’d seen these for years and had even written on them, but didn’t think much of them. After using one for a couple workshops last week, I know what I want for Christmas. I love how you can move from one screen to another with the press of a button… its like an “etch a sketch” but you can go back to your previous four pictures! And I love that you can print out as many copies as you want. It’s kind of ridiculous, but I think I want one of these for my home office.

But here’s the catch. I had this really detailed grid that I printed from the whiteboard in the workshop last week. When I got back home, I wanted to send it off to someone to help me make a slide out of it. My dang scanner was kaput since it was out of printer ink (anyone have any idea why the thing can’t scan without ink?) and I hadn’t thought to save the file from the whiteboard to a USB. So… what next. Ah, the iPhone!

I took a pic of the iPhone and sent it off to him. The quality of this picture was unbelievable. I should have known this, I use iPhones to take pictures straight from the whiteboard all the time. Why not a printout of the whiteboard to a picture of the printout! You could probably throw in a scan and fax and still be able to see all the details. A bit of sadness struck me as the whiteboard lost a little allure.

Yesterday, I was on the phone with one of my clients and he wanted to send me a printed document that he’d marked all over. He went out to get his assistant to scan it and she wasn’t there… so I said “you’ve got an iPhone, right”? Just send me a picture. And it came through practically as clear as the original.

So I have to admit, I’m rethinking what I want for Christmas. As much as I really love that whiteboard (right now, I’d pick it over a new Audi)… I should probably just get whatever latest iPhone is out. Sigh. They win again…