Spring Design Alex to Feature Borders eBook Store no comments
Today Spring Design and Borders announced an agreement to feature the soon-to-come Kobo powered ebook store at Borders.com on the Spring Design Alex ereader.
The Alex is supposed to be out in February at a price of $399 for a WiFi version
with a 3G enabled version to follow.
As you probably know, Spring Design is involved in litigation with Barnes & Noble. Spring alleges that B&N stole the Alex ereader’s design amongst other things. After seeing the Alex at CES and getting to play with it a little, I have to say that if the court decides that the allegations are true, B&N didn’t do a very good job of copying. If the nook ereader copies the Alex’s looks, it sure doesn’t copy the functionality very well.
Where the nook is slow and clunky the Alex is quick and works as you expect it to. The LCD and the e-ink screen play well together and you won’t have the problem of double-entering commands because the first command you tried to input on the touchscreen didn’t seem to go through, as sometimes happens with the nook’s LCD touchscreen. When you download a book it will be ready to read quickly – no waiting for “formatting”.
The Alex’s LCD screen can also be used for web browsing. You can send a page to the e-ink screen and read it there.
At 8.7 x 4.7 inches, the Alex is a bit taller than other ereaders with 6-inch screens due to the LCD screen, and this may make it somewhat more awkward to carry around. Also, at $140 more than the nook or the Kindle you will need to decide if the web browsing on the small color screen feature is worth the premium to you.
£149.00
£109
