Seemingly from left field, Amazon yesterday released a free Kindle 2 update that added a couple of (at first glance) really neat features, but ultimately left me scratching my head. I guess call me ungrateful, if you will (and the day before Thanksgiving, too).

The biggest addition the update provides is native PDF support, so let’s talk about everything else first.

The first thing the update does is extend the Kindle 2’s battery life by an additional 85%. According to the official press release, with WiFi turned on the device will now run 7 days instead of 4. Honestly I have never found the Kindle’s battery life to be an issue; with light-to-moderate reading (and the WiFi turned off) mine lasts roughly a month between charges. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but battery life wasn’t on my list of things that needed improving. Of course, for free, I’ll take it.

Amazon also tweaked the Kindle 2’s screensaver, changing the unit’s default timeout from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. I don’t get this change at all. For starters, why can’t Amazon simply let Kindle owners choose their own time out length? That seems like a really simple thing to do from a programming standpoint. Additionally, the screen saver can be enabled with a simple flip of the power switch on top of the Kindle. No matter which way you hold the unit, there’s really no way to get your fingers more than an inch or two away from the switch. What a seemingly random and pointless change. Additionally, the new update breaks the old unofficial Kindle Screensaver Hack that allowed Kindle owners the ability to replace the Kindle 2’s default screensaver (pictures of dead authors) with their own pictures. Why is this such a battle? It’s obviously not a difficult change to make (I believe the hack simply redirected the directory from which the screensaver pulled the pictures), so why doesn’t Amazon let us do it? It would be like if every Dell computer forced you to use that annoying Windows star field screen saver. GAH!

So anyway, yeah, on with the big one — the ability to natively read PDF files.

I can’t tell you how upset (and jealous) I was when Amazon announced the larger Kindle DX just months after I purchased a Kindle 2. Not only did the Kindle DX have a much larger screen, but it viewed PDF files natively (no conversion required). To view PDF files on the Kindle 1 and 2, owners have to first convert them through a fairly simple process that takes only a minute or two. It’s not a big deal if you’re only converting over one file, but a pain in the ass if you want to convert fifty. Additionally, the larger Kindle DX possessed the ability to view documents in landscape mode, making the viewing area even wider.

With yesterday’s update, the Kindle 2 finally acquires the same functionality of the DX. Kindle 2 owners can now view PDF files by simply copying them over to their Kindle 2 via the USB cable, and the Kindle screen can be rotated as well now (the new option is located under the font menu). Unfortunately, here’s the sucker punch. The Kindle 2’s screen is not as big as the DX’s screen. It’s not even close. Upon loading my first PDF I thought my Kindle’s screen had gone wonky and drawn squiggles all over the screen until I realized that those squiggles were actually words. Rotating the screen helped a little, but the text was still pretty small. Additionally, when rotated it’s almost impossible to hit the “Next Page” button with your thumb while holding the unit by its sides. Maybe something like a comic book or a magazine with large text might look okay on the 2’s screen, but normal book-sized text, even to a guy with 20/20 vision, looked teeny-tiny. And since you can’t adjust font sizes or zoom in on a PDF, what you see is what you get. To be fair I only tried about three books before disappointment set in. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try a few more.

Finally, yesterday’s Kindle update breaks both the hacks I had previously installed (the previously mentioned screensaver hack and the font hack). Post update, neither one can be reinstalled — it looks like Amazon made some additional security changes under the hood that are preventing previous hacks from working — so if that’s a deal breaker to you, you might want to hold off until hackers (in the true sense of the word) are able to undo the undoings, so to speak.

I desperately wanted the ability to read PDF files on my Kindle. Since I got that for Thanksgiving, perhaps I’ll ask Santa for a magnifying glass.