Arbitrary Cidin said:
1. Does your level, equipment, etc. carry over if you use your save data?
I think Bioware said that you will be able to carry your Shepard over to ME2, and all the choices you made in the first game (whether or not to kill Wrex, what your character background was etc.) will also carry over.
However I think that they said you wont keep your level and equipment as such, as it would be a tad unbalanced if the player began the game as a level 60 character with top level Spectre Gear etc.
Despite that, they're gonna implement some kind of system that rewards those players who made it to the higher levels, within the second game so that people don't feel like their leveling up was all for noting
Will try and find the source with all that info on now.
EDIT
http://blogs.ign.com/BW_MassEffect/2009/06/17/123208/ found it

I haven't read all of it though, it seems to come close to revealing things that I'd rather be left as a surprise for when I actually play the game