I was visiting my grandparents today, when a friend of my grandmother's stopped by at one point. This friend is in her 70s, and a few months ago she got some disease that has paralyzed her vocal chords, rendering her permanently incapable of speaking. When she came in she pulled out something which I have never seen or heard of before.

It's called a Boogie Board, and it's basically an electronic slate that has been engineered to mimic the feel of writing with real pen and paper. She uses it to talk to people. Nothing fancy about it - you just write on it, and there's a single button you press to erase it. It's got one of those LCD displays that requires no electricity to display a static image (they don't call it e-ink, but I'm sure it's similar), and it's powered by a non-replaceable watch battery. Erasing it is the only thing that uses electricity, so it supposedly lasts years before the battery dies. It's very thin and light, and feels really high quality. It's only a simple device that does one single task, but it's super cool because it does that task so incredibly well. It doesn't try to have a bunch of bells and whistles - it just emulates the feeling and convenience of a piece of paper and a pen.

I looked on their web site, and they also make a fancier version that can save drawings as PDF's, and transfer them to your computer. I'd be all over it, except there's two major missing functions - you can't erase parts of an image (only the whole image like a regular Boogie Board), and you can't view saved images on the device itself. If they can someday release a model with those two functions, it would definitely be on my Christmas list.

http://www.myboogieboard.com

Oh, and they're made in the USA.

I could use one for drawing... (i am drawing, but so far with just mouse and laptop trackpad/red point)

The fancy once does apparently function as a drawing tablet for a computer.

Shows how old I am-I always thought a "Boogie Board" was a type of surfboard kids used when I lived in Florida during the mid-60's Now I learn something new-its a form of LCD display device-CLEVER-would like to see this device!Have pictures of this thing?Guess as my old 60's English teacher says-"If you want to learn about something--Look it up yourself"will follow her advice and Google it.Old "pruneface" as us kids called her at the time behind her back may have something!The things from Jr High!

  I do believe the device was named after the surfboard. I linked their web site at the bottom of my original post - they have lots of pictures on there.