I agree that the article's not too great -- I think that the big bang-for-the-buck for most of these features (except closures) will do is make for much cleaner, more streamlined library support that'll make day to day "hey this module's terribly boring but it needs to be written" code much nicer.

Addition of closures, on the other hand, will make C++ a viable back-end target for a lot of cool language hackery. :o)