I concur with Murg and the well-known Australasian Kobo brick issue. The update via Kobo Desktop seemed to proceed happily and the result was no change from 2.0.0c. Tried it again just for curiosity and it seemed to update again happily to 2.0.4 which still looked the same.
Waited a day but manually updated to 2.1.4 and everything is fine. Speedup is terrific and dead taps no longer an issue here. Main issue is (me) falling asleep while reading & finding myself a few pages ahead or behind - much the same as with a real book. Don't use an SD card.
With all the trouble with a bricking Kobo, I abandoned using Kobo Desktop and wifi. However, I would never have known to try the update twice. I may never have connected up to Kobo Desktop for another month. This is why I keep checking back here.
Anyway, my general feeling is that 2.1.4 is about where my Kobo experience should have started, although I wouldn't mind another 1.327 seconds before the clock disappears
It would also be nice to know if the bricking issue is over for good or us brickers have to go through 2-phase updates forever.