They're buggy, gimmicky, overpriced pieces of crap. Or at least the models a few years ago were, they may have gotten better in the meantime.
SMART makes a ton of money in the education market, and we had about a dozen at my high school. The touch controls aren't sensitive or precise enough, the model of projecting onto a separate touchscreen means that it has to be recalibrated constantly, and the only software (SMART's drawing software) that takes advantage of the functionality has almost no features and still manages to have a horrible UI. No teacher used it for more than two or three lessons.
hmm. Back in my high school days (about 6 years ago), my physics professor had one in his classroom and he used it for every lecture. It was good for him because he could do page after page of whiteboarding and then send us to pdf to review.
Of course this is pretty impressive 6 years ago. If they haven't changed at all since then, I wouldn't use them, I would just project a touchscreen computer and use a stylus.
SMART makes a ton of money in the education market, and we had about a dozen at my high school. The touch controls aren't sensitive or precise enough, the model of projecting onto a separate touchscreen means that it has to be recalibrated constantly, and the only software (SMART's drawing software) that takes advantage of the functionality has almost no features and still manages to have a horrible UI. No teacher used it for more than two or three lessons.