Well, went to the game day, got a PH 4ed. From what little that I did get to do, it appears that some of the things that I thought would be poor changes, actually worked fairly well. I will try to summarize some of the main points.
The Clerics Role: With the intorduction of healing surges, and every character being able to do so, I figured the cleric's role would be diminished to nothing. Boy was I wrong. A lot of his/her abilities bolster the party or individual members of the party by both increasing thier ability to heal, or by increasing thier ability to perform certain actions. I actually played the cleric of the party in the second adventure, and even though the party lost out to the dragon, we lasted a lot longer than it apperead we should have. This was mainly due to my cleric being able to perform heals from a distance and bolster the rogue and fighters ability to cause damage.
Powers instead of spells: I was already pretty happy with the way they worked this part until I found out that it worked for any class. Now that I have seen how they worked it, I am much more confident in it being able to work. I was able to see firsthand how the at-will, encounter, and daily powers can be used to move an encounter along. One of the things that I noticed is that a character will no longer fall into a general broad catagory, but into many sub-categories depending on what powers he/she opts for. The martial, arcane, and divine powers all seem to be fairly balanced (not sure about the warlock, as one was not offered to be playable in this campaign, but looks like the balanced him out fairly well) and the way that the designed the powers for the martial characters makes some sense.
Class Changes: Ok, I am still a bit miffed about the lack of a Druid. I can live without a monk or a barbarian. However, there were hints in the Players Handbook that these classes will be availible in some type of expansion in the future. (They mention Ki energy, Nature energy, etc...) The added classes seem to make some kind of sense. I can see a lot of similarities in the 3.5 Warlock and the 4.0 Warlock, and am thinking that the class was one of thier test-pilots in 3.5 ed. Every class seemed to have its place and worked well together as a group filling in the gaps. I played a rogue in the first adventure, and was able to do a lot of interesting things that a 3.5 rogue at 1st level woudl be hard pressed to do.
Skill Changes: Ok, I had not heard a lot about this before today other than it was going to be radically different. What I did not expect was that they pared down all of the skills from 3.5 into 17 different skills period. And they did get rid of skill points (thank goodness). They combined a lot of skills that are similar into a group. This made knowing how good your character is at something a lot easier, as well as cleaned up the Character Sheet a bit too.
Healing Surges: Already kinda mentioned this in the above comment on the cleric, however it does deserve special note here. By allowing the characters to have the ability to use these surges to gain back some of what they lost, the battles can become a bit more fun and long-lasting, even at 1st level. This does help ensure that the arcane spellcaster is no longer in danger to a one-hit kill in every encounter. The way they changed the healing from negative points, and the death-throws is also a bit more consistent and believable.
All in all, I have to say I am more impressed with this edition than I thought that I would be. I figured on not changing to 4th Edition for quite some time, and sticking with 3.5, however, I am starting to have second thoughts on that idea. It is a bit different and will take a complete reorganization of thought processes, but I think it is still a fun game and was not destroyed completely as I feared it might have been.
If anyone else played, please give me your feedback. If you have any questions on mechanics, please ask. Just keep in mind all I have is the Players Handbook, and am probably not gonna have the funds for the other 2 core books for a while.