I got myself a new note 2 last night, and I'm trying to configure it. It's my first android device, so I'm not sure how the system works in some respects.
I came from Windows Phone 7, and there were a few nice features on that phone that I find I'm missing - namely the ability to see upcoming calendar events on my lock screen, as well as the number of emails/texts/whatever I have waiting, and the number of calls that I missed. I found a couple of potential lockscreen apps on google play, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to enable them. There appears to be no option in my settings.
Using android 4.1.2 - don't know if that's the latest version available for me, but I did update last night, presumably from 4.0.