Noteboard Foldable Pocket-Size Dry-Erase Whiteboard (NOBO101)

This is a great little innovation. I use it as a sort-of desktop placemat. I lay it out flat on my desk and usually set my laptop on it. Rather than the dry erase board hanging on my wall, it is always right at hand and in reach for scribbling down a thought, creating to-do lists, or jotting down a note while on a call. Sometimes I escape from the distractions of the office for a few hours to get work done. When I do, I pack very light. I usually only bring my computer, this noteboard and an Expo Vis-a-vis Wet-erase marker.This product is basically a few dozen blank notecards laminated together. There is about a 4mm gap between each notecard, so that the whole thing can fold up nicely. As a result, you are forced to separate your notes / drawings etc. into these separate note cards. I actually really love this. I use each note card as a separate space for a thought or a task and I work through each item. Usually, for the top row of cards, I'll write out each day of the week and have each card in that row as a new day, in which I can list all the tasks I need to complete. It really helps to keep me organized.The marker that comes with the Noteboard is pretty terrible. I replaced it pretty quickly after. I prefer to use the Expo Vis-a-vis wet erase markers because they are thin pointed and I can fit a lot of writing / drawings in one box. It also helps me to not erase everything I've just written when my arm mistakenly wipes across the Noteboard.Expo Vis-A-Vis Wet Erase Markers, 8 Colored Markers (16078)

I saw the Noteboard on Amazon and thought it looked neat, but couldn't think what I'd use it for. I got one for Christmas (coincidence; I hadn't mentioned it to anyone) and have to say it's a lot more useful than I had expected and have ordered a second.I'm using it to track my son's piano practice. It's been a pain to get him (and his mother) to remember to practice daily and what to practice, so I've divided up the board into goals, current practice pieces, review pieces, etc, and a block for each day of the week to indicate time practiced and notes about the practice session.Here's where the Noteboard is beating a regular whiteboard or a practice planner/notebook:The notebook gets forgotten, so a big whiteboard on the wall is a great reminder. But there's no good place near the piano to hang a whiteboard... we can't reach it to write on if we hang it over the piano, and it's not a place for a whiteboard when company is coming. A traditional whiteboard there has to get tucked behind some furniture or leaned up against a wall where we risk someone brushing against it, and it's clunky to take it down and work on it at the table. So my attempts to use a regular whiteboard quickly ended with the whiteboard repurposed in another room. The practice planner has the info we need, but it doesn't serve as a reminder, and even when my son remembers to practice, he never bothers to look at the planner to remember what he's supposed to work on.The Noteboard combines the best of both approaches... it's big and obvious, I can hang it where it's inconvenient to write on, but easily take it down and put it on the kitchen table to update the next week's practice plan. When company is coming, it easily disappears into a desk drawer.And that's where it gets better... I can take my whiteboard to piano lessons with us. I don't have to have a notebook that needs info copied onto the whiteboard, then info from the whiteboard copied into the planner the day of the lesson (or a whiteboard reminder and the assumption that the notebook will get filled out properly)... all of our goals and tracking info just goes with us and we update it directly with the piano teacher. So it results in less "clerical overhead," as I can just glance at the board and see if my son has practiced today and what he practiced on... if he practiced but didn't make appropriate notes, I see that and can ask to have it filled in on the day he practiced, instead of depending on him "remembering" (otherwise known as "inventing") what he did all week right before we head to the lesson.There's one panel front that's exposed when it's folded up... we quickly learned to just not write on that corner (it's the one with the company information, so it's easy to remember). Outside of that, the other panels are well-protected from erasure if it's kept folded flat... inside the pouch or with a band around it. The marker doesn't transfer across panels.The only real drawback I have to complain about is I dislike the gaps between the cards... I know they're there to make it fold up easily, but it's a pain when you want to draw "big". If that were solved... folds up neatly and easily, but with a solid background and no significant "bumps" that snag the pen, I'd give it five stars in a heartbeat.

For what I paid, I was disappointed to see that the noteboard has not been laminated shut. If I accidentally set an edge on something wet, it looks like it will slowly become waterlogged. Also, it's not always easy to wipe the dry erase markers off if I leave the writing on the sheet for more than a day. In any case, usage-wise, it just didn't work out for me. In theory, the clear parts of the noteboard can be useful for breaking up different pieces of notes, but for me personally, more often than not, the discontinuous surface interfered with my writing. I'm a free-form mindmapper, and I like to write my thoughts anywhere I please. Using the noteboard, I tend to feel constrained and forced to stay within each card cell (which I will ultimately fail to do). Most importantly, I was really hoping for something stiffer, as I don't have that much desk space to lay the whole thing out flat. Lastly, the noteboard is composed of 5x7 linked-index cards. I think I would prefer that it fold exactly in half, rather than having to fold an awkward, floppy, extra segment. In sum, these notecards as a whiteboard might be useful for some, but for the reasons listed above, it just wasn't practical enough for my purposes..

I ordered this product not because I knew I would need it, but because it seemed cool (and the price was definitely right!) Since it arrived a couple days ago (I only ordered it earlier this week!) I've been using it constantly. To-do lists, essay outlines, mind maps, and doodles, and I'm sure I'll find other uses for it as time goes on. I was worried that the words would disappear when I folded it up, but they stayed perfectly intact and were easy to erase using the cloth bag it came in. I'm just glad that I had the foresight to order two, because I definitely need to give one as a gift. Everyone I know could use this!

The Noteboard is a wonderful product that saves me from hauling a bulky battlemap to my pen and paper evenings.Just one minor complaint: they slap a barcode sticker on the bag which leaves a sticky residue taking forever to get off. And you WANT to get it off because you use the bag for whiping the Noteboard. Why do this when the barcode is already printed on the bag?