Do borate products (Supreme, Optimzier, etc.)work as claimed?

[sailork]

I suspect one of the reasons you're seeing less chlorine consumption is that the boron is keeping some of the organics in check. Most marine diesels around here add boron based products to the fuel to keep fungus from growing. If it will kill fungus that lives in diesel fuel it's bound to kill some of the buggers in a pool.

I'm very tempted to add borax to my pool, but I'm put off by the idea of using a bunch of HCl to bring my already high pH back down. What would be wrong with adding boric acid? Would I get a different result?