Welcome to the eParty Borders, Have a Seat by Amazon and Barnes & Noble


In my town, there used to be a Borders bookstore every few miles, until a few years ago, when they all started to disappear. I’m not hunting them down or anything, so it’s not like I know exactly where they are today, but the only one I’ve seen recently is downtown by my old work. Otherwise, I haven’t seen them around.

That makes me wonder how well Borders is doing, but not enough to actually research it in any way. What I do know is that they just released an e-reader app, in the same vein as the Kindle and Barnes & Noble apps, for both the iPhone and iPad [iTunes link]. So how is it?

I downloaded it for the iPad, and at first, I thought it might be kind of cool, but then I dug into it a bit. The page transitions is a bit odd, but that’s adjustable, so that should make it cool, right? Not really. The page curl takes the page and flips it up, like a reporter’s spiral bound notebook, which is odd when reading a novel. Then there’s the load times, which in some cases, takes forever. And there’s also the lack of a dictionary or other research options, found in most other e-readers. Frankly, the only real thing I liked about it was the bookmark, which looks like an actual bookmark.

There are many other choices for e-readers on the iPad and iPhone, and for me, Borders falls in the back of the pack. I think that for me, I’ll just stick with the others and pretend this one never happened. Frankly, there’s just no compelling reason for me to use it.


Kevin Whipps

Kevin Whipps is a copy editor, writer, photographer and custom car builder based in the Phoenix, Ariz. area. For the past 10 years he's been building his portfolio, mostly in the automotive publishing industry. When he's not wrenching on cars, most of his time is spent discovering new gadgets and toys, and of course, using everything Apple. Whipps is also married, and has a baby boy, Kevin Whipps Jr., coming on February 7, 2010.

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