good news. deinstallation prior to upgrading to PR1.2 doesnt seem to be necessary.
http://wiki.maemo.org/Kernel_Power#U...ng_to_a_new_PR
my OTA upgrade went off without a hitch and I'm running v37 on PR1.2 now.

I decided to promote v37 to testing as there were too many problems with earlier versions.
Please test it (http://wiki.maemo.org/Help_testing_software) and then vote on
https://maemo.org/packages/package_i....6.28-maemo37/
Thanks