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First, the good news….Amazon announced today that a free firmware upgrade will be going out to all Kindles that increases the battery life by 85 percent and adds support for PDFs (hmmm…maybe in support of iMagz?). The upgrade will be installed automatically in the background via WhisperNet. Wow, makes you wonder just how inefficient the code was that a firmware tweak nearly doubles battery life.

As for the PDF support, users can read PDF files by emailing them directly to their Kindle address or by loading them on the device via USB. PDFs can also be automatically converted to the Kindle format by emailing them with ‘Convert" in the subject line.

Not a bad pre Christmas upgrade…BOY Amazon must be feeling the heat.

Now, the bad news? Digitimes is reporting that  Scott Liu, chairman of Prime View International (PVI), the company that makes the screens for most Ebook Readers is telling us not to hold our breath for the $100 reader.

He says the market is just not big enough and competition isn’t fierce enough yet to see screen prices drop in 2010…and as the most expensive element of an Ebook Reader is the screen, we shouldn’t look for any many price breakthroughs for another year at least.

Still, one can hope.