Good news for Blackberry 8700 owners - the 4.2 OS is finally available to download from Blackberry.com. The download is actually on the Venezuela area of the site, but it is the multilanguage OS so you don't need worry about it all being in Spanish. The only catch is you do have to cope with filling in your name and contact details in on a Spanish registration form.
Here's the link. To install you will have to rename (or delete) vendor.xml in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research in Motion\AppLoader before it will recognise the OS upgrade in Application Loader.
Benefits of upgrading are better themes, more useful standby screen, media manager, media player, Blackberry Maps, and more ...
I upgraded mine yesterday and lost the ability to reply to e-mails, the Send option was missing from the menu and all I could do was save a draft. Reactivating the device did not help, I had to wipe and reactivate, but now it's fine. According to users on blackberryforums.com it's meant to be faster than the 4.1 OS but it seems slower to me ... it's definitely much better overall though.
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