  We calculate the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD at finite temperature
with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using
lattices with temporal extent Nt=8. Calculations have been performed with two
different improved staggered fermion actions, the asqtad and p4 actions.
Overall, we find good agreement between results obtained with these two O(a^2)
improved staggered fermion discretization schemes. A comparison with earlier
calculations on coarser lattices is performed to quantify systematic errors in
current studies of the equation of state. We also present results for
observables that are sensitive to deconfining and chiral aspects of the QCD
transition on Nt=6 and 8 lattices. We find that deconfinement and chiral
symmetry restoration happen in the same narrow temperature interval. In an
Appendix we present a simple parametrization of the equation of state that can
easily be used in hydrodynamic model calculations. In this parametrization we
also incorporated an estimate of current uncertainties in the lattice
calculations which arise from cutoff and quark mass effects. We estimate these
systematic effects to be about 10 MeV
