[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] littlewierdo:
Alrighty, a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. While most apps arent designed to utilize quad cores, this isnt likely to stay that way for long. Since quadcores are fairly new and Android app developers can actually update their apps without some sort of approval process, expect support to happen fairly quickly.

2. The SG3 has a stylus too.

3. ICS will be available for the Note probably in the next month or so. The latest rumour is July 13th. It was delayed 2 weeks because Samsung was fixing a kernel bug that caused the international Note to hard brick when flashing ICS roms.

4. The stock apps are interchangeable. The apps on the Note are available for the SG3 and the SG3 apps are available to put on the Note (this will become easier once ICS is official on the Note).

5. While yes, the Note is bigger, it isnt by much.

Now that Ive addressed those points, I want to talk about ram usage and lag.

The very first thing I am going to recommend is a simple factory reset. Strange as it may be, my Note had nothing but problems first day I had it. I should interject here, my Note was brand new, NOT a refurb. I had only installed a few of my own apps (Audible, BeyondPod, Go Launcher, Beautiful Widgets, and Widget Locker) and had NOT (and still havent in fact) rooted it. I also updated as many of the stock apps manually from the market as I could find since I noticed the stock apps were not linked to the market. And apps began force closing left and right, battery was dead within 6 hours of just streaming audio over bluetooth (hardly any screen time), poor performance, etc. Before I returned it, I did a factory reset and it has been running great since (on probably month 3 now of having it, I bought it very shortly after it came out in the states).

Strangely enough, my brothers Samsung GNexus had poor network performance out of the box, we did a factory reset WHILE driving home with his brand new phone (we drove 2.5 hours to pick up his phone so we had the time) and since then, it has been working fine since.

Ram usage is normal for it to be in the 75% range. Android works a bit differently than Windows and their is no negative to high ram usage TO A POINT. Ram usage exceeding at or exceeding 90% however would be troubling and actually cause poor, laggy performance but under 90% is fine. I dont want to go into the details here but a quick Google search, difference between windows and linux ram usage, might be beneficial.

Finally, my raw opinion, the SG3 is the better phone. The screen is better (albeit smaller), slightly faster, etc. Software differences are a moot point since all of that will be changed in a month when ICS is official for the Note and you can just install software from the phone you DONT have on the phone you DO have. Source code has been released for the Note and the SG3 so we may actually begin seeing some decent rom development begin to happen here in the coming weeks for both phones. What I would say is this, if you want a better quality screen and a slightly faster phone spec wise, go with the SG3. If you want the bigger screen, stick with the Note. Personally, I prefer the screen size and since I spent money on an extended battery for the Note (the Mugen 5400 mah), I wont be switching phones any time soon.