July 08, 2010, 8:06 AM — It was way back in December 2009 when Borders first announced that it was partnering with Kobo for its e-book store, and the service finally launched yesterday. Amazon has the Kindle, Barnes & Noble has the Nook, but Borders has opted to offer a range of dedicated e-readers. There's the Kobo eReader for $149, the Libre eBook Reader for a very affordable $119 (though do note it's an LCD display, not E Ink, and its available only for pre-order as of today), and the Sony Touch ($169) and Pocket ($149). The Kobo seems to be the 'flagship' model and Borders is throwing in a $20 Borders Gift card and "Double Borders Bucks" if you buy now. So for effectively $129 you get an E Ink e-reader, though you'll have to sync books onto it via a USB cable; there's no wireless connectivity. The Borders e-book store is also rolling out with broad support of non-dedicated devices; they have e-reader software available for iPhone, iPad, Android (2.0 and later) and Blackberry, as well as PC and Mac computers. These all do support wireless downloading of e-books, but don't have the syncing features of Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iBooks ecosystems. If you only read your books on one device that won't matter, but for those of us who jump back and forth from mobile device to...uh, slightly less mobile device, that syncing feature is a nice perk. Border's e-reader apps let you purchase books from within the e-reader software; that seems to be an important differentiator to some, though I personally don't see dumping out to a browser to buy an e-book that much of an inconvenience. I tried the iPad and Android versions of the e-reader software and surprisingly found the Android version had a better Read More
First look at Borders' e-book store and apps | ITworld - ITworld | IT news, technology analysis and how-to resources
