Hi Mike
Good questions.
Visually, I thought it was spectacular. I have obviously never seen anything like it before, and possibly never will again. To see the "rising snake", followed by a distorted D-shaped annulus perched just below/on the horizon, was an exceedingly unique thing to see. For the first minute or so, I was able to view naked eye. During that time, when the Sun was not more than 0.5 degrees above the horizon, I thought the spectacle for all it was, was AS good as a total.
Having said that, the experience was completely different. Even in the closest of annular eclipses, the light drop is negligible compared with a total. This was particularly hard to notice in this instance because it occurred at sunrise. The biggest thing I noticed (visually) was that there was no "glow" where the imminent Sunrise would occur. Joe Cali's website shows this clearly in a nice image pre-Sunrise. Good think we had our cameras pre-aligned...
An "interesting" way to visualise the light drop is by watching Jack Hao Hia's video (second half) here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoE13-5aflI
I say "interesting" because the video is deceiving. His camera was set to follow the light curve of a "normal" night > dawn > day sequence. You see it gets light, then dark, then light. This is not showing the absolute light drop - which is why it is deceiving - but it is showing the light drop, relative to what an exposure would have been on another day.
All in all, this experience was, photographically and visually, as good as a total for me.