I have an 8830. What is the latest s/w for a Verizon Phone and how do you update it?

You can also use the Verizon site:

BlackBerry® Software Updates

It works fine for me. Latest Desktop there is 4.3 and the OS is 4.2.

Works fine.

I recently tried to upgrade my RIM OS from 4.2.2.176 to 4.2.2.196. It ended be a cluster-frack. I initially got a 561 error code and could not hard reset it. Verizon Tech help were Tech helpless. So I dug around found a process to wipe the 8830. I uninstalled the new version from my laptop and was able to reinstall 4.2.2.176 and restore most of my 8830 previous configuration prior to the whole sleigh ride.

My question is this, if I want to retry the upgrade:
1) Is 4.2.2.196 worth it?
2) Do I need to uninstall the previous version from my laptop before I install the newer version? I thought the installation scripts were to take care of that.

4.5 will be out hopefully soon, I would just wait for that.

The xxx.196 adds support for 8gig SD cards