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Re:Ask HN: Whiteboards - porcelain or melamine? by kochbeck on Monday January 10, 2011 @08:39PM (#2090512)
The usual benefit of porcelain is that it's on top of metal, and the metal takes a magnet. So if you're going to be putting something on the board that would benefit greatly from magnets, like, say, a timeline that you update everyday by moving a series of magnetic pointers, then porcelain is for you.

OTOH, if you're just going to write and erase as is most typical, melamine is nice because when somebody inevitably comes and writes in permanent marker on the board, you don't feel bad throwing it away for a new one.

Re:Ask HN: Whiteboards - porcelain or melamine? by healsdata on Monday January 10, 2011 @11:15PM (#2090846)
We have a mixture of both in our office and I prefer the melamine ones because they seem to have less problems with marker hanging around after being erased. We also have some cheap melamine boards and some nicer ones; I'd recommend spending the money to get nicer ones because the cheap ones also have problems with ink lingering.

However, like the parent said, if you have a use case that requires magnets, porcelain is the way to go.

Re:Ask HN: Whiteboards - porcelain or melamine? by wesleyd on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @12:28PM (#2092680)
If you draw over the permanent marker with normal whiteboard marker, they usually both wipe off...
Re:Ask HN: Whiteboards - porcelain or melamine? by skeltoac on Tuesday January 11, 2011 @06:03PM (#2093997)
Have you considered glass? My favorite whiteboard was recycled from a 7-foot tempered glass tabletop.