Our votes are 4 times more valuable now (possible more for the smaller accoutns due to the curve as well) but they are practically 4 times fewer.
So in a sense, your total voting power hasn't really change, it just drains faster through voting. This might meant lead to people being quite conservative with their votes.
Still, accounts that have more than 500SP can adjust that back to the old settings so they have weaker votes, but more of them and get a very similar voting experience.
Right, and people lower than ~482 SP can use eSteem app to have the voting bar too, something I didn't know about but my wife confirmed.
Yep, this is true, @good-karma just mentioned that in the comments on his HF19 and eSteem post just now.