[fjtorres]

Just FYI:
1- PDFs are not ebooks, they are a document archiving format. PDFs were created in the 80's to serve as digital microfiches to let companies archive documents and print them on demand. They work best of all on paper. The format has been tweaked over the years but it still does not deliver a great experience on anything but full-power PCs. Look around the various Mobileread Forums and two-thirds of the posts seem to be PDF-related. On ebook readers, anything list than a 10in screen will be at best decent, at worst marginal. And depending on the pdf (academic stuff is worst) they tend to be slow to open and navigate. It is not the best way to see what the 360 can do. If PDFs are the sum total of your reading you will be best served by returning it and getting something significantly larger. Even the Pocketbook IQ android tablet with a 7in screen is marginal for pdf display. A Pandigital 9in Android tablet runs US$199 and the screen is large enough to display pdfs reasonably well. Load times will still be long and the Adobe reader 9 for Android software is minimalistic (load, scroll, quit) but stable. Look for reviews before you decide. At higher prices your options improve. Pocketbook 902 and KindleDX both have large eink screens and decent PDF viewers. But nothing less that a pc will let you do PDFs with no compromises.

2- If you want to try PDF conversions, the best/easiest tool is Mobipocket.com's Creator Professional edition. It is free and easy to use. Just make sure you do the pro install and it will convert PDFs to clean Mobipocket files suitable for use of the Pocketbook or Kindle reader anywhere else. No cleaning up is needed. And the converter leaves behind an html version of the file in the working folder which is readable pretty much everywhere. Unless you're talking academic pdfs conversion is usually very clean and fast and the output excellent.

3- To really see what ebook readers do best, Pocketbook, Sony, or whatever, you ought to see how they perform with a true ebook format like prc/mobi, epub, or FB2 as those formats are designed to let the *user* control the presentation, whereas PDF formatting is generally frozen by the publisher/creator and all the nice user setting features that the Pocketbook offers go unused. There are plenty of good ebooks to test right here are Mobileread.

4- I've been living off the 15.2 firmware for nearly 6 months with no issues. So are others. Downgrading is not your only option. (But, as I've said; I avoid PDFs like the plague and generally do my reading via ebooks formats.)

Good luck!
Hopefully you'll find the right tool for your needs.