I've learned to love the 14-42mm II

The 14-42mm II is the best Olympus kit lens. The 12-50mm may appear to be good when looking at MTF charts, but the REAL WORLD photos tell a different story. The 12-50mm has poor contrast, especially in the corners. The 14-42mm gives you consistently decent photos at all focal lengths, as long as you know to stop down appropriately. My current rule is f/5.6 at 14mm exactly, f/8.0 at 15mm to 25mm, and f/9.0 for anything longer than 25mm.

Following my f-stop rules, here is a really nice photo of a marina, which appears razor sharp when downsized for web viewing. (There appears to be some shadow noise--it was an extremely high contrast scene, and I probably shouldn't have used -0.7 EV.)