have a list of the main changes we will experience as end users?
It is sort of hard to give such a list as there are different types of end users, e.g. those who use the RPC console and those who don't for example.
A few of the larger more noticeable changes (in my opinion):
Header first synchronization allowing for faster synchronisation.
A new bandwidth dialog where you can see a graph of bandwidth usage over time.
A new peers dialog where you can see a visual representation of the peers you are connected to and various peer information.
Lots of new RPC commands for better wallet control, a complete overhaul of the RPC console to make it much easier to use all commands now have detailed help information and usage examples etc. and the help is much more readable.
Much clearer error messages in most cases - e.g. The error LTex encountered above would be quite a bit better explained.
Improvements to how inputs are selected for payments - which would make a problem like what LTex encountered (with dust) much less frequent)
Watch only addresses.
Enables multi signature stuff.
A REST API which developers may find handy.
There are then additionally 100s of little performance improvements, stability fixes and security fixes plus lots of other things that I didn't include above.
To get a more comprehensive idea you can look at all bitcoin release notes since 2013-05-29 (0.8.2) - most of these changes apply.
