Coupler Q's

I recently got back into the hobby but am still a newbe and don't know very much. All my old locos and rolling stock have standard Rapido couplers. Last week I went to the Reading Pa. train show and bought some coal cars that matched some of my old road names. Not being very observent, I didn't notice until I got home that they had knuckle couplers. In reading through the forum I came to the conclusion that Micro Trains makes a good product so I bought some and installed them on my old coal cars so they would work with the new ones. Worked like a charm. I have since noticed that most new locos & rolling stock now come with knuckle couplers. If you guys can help me out with these Q's I would greatly appreciate it: 1. There are several manufactures of knuckle couplers. Are they all compatable? 2. When you by a new car how can you tell which manufactures coupler is on it or doesn't it matter? 3. MTS makes 10 differnt types, whats the diffrence?

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I don't know, I usually get a 10-pair pack of MT's. (I'm just answering all your questions.)
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I take the "open the box and see" method. As long as you're gentle with the box, most hobby shops won't mind if you do that. There's also a higher probability of knuckle couplers with the higher quality (and more expensive) cars. Some include both, but IME in N changing the coupler involves changing the trucks.
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One difference I've noted has been the style of truck attached to the coupler. There could be different mounting points for different couplers (like Kadee has in HO) where to make the knuckles match up the shank is at a different height relative to the coupler.
Puckdropper

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All of the various N-scale knuckle couplers do mate with each other. The lack of compatibility comes into play when you want to use decoupler devices.
Micro Trains has the Magne-Matic couples that can be control with a magnet under the tracks. Atlas, Kato and Model Die Casting have their own versions of the knuckle couplers. There are also non-operating couplers like Unimate. These all mate together.

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Not the answer you're looking for but one of the more recent MRR magazines has a short article about using Z scale couplers as replacement for the regular N knuckle couplers. Looks like if you're careful you don't have to worry about changing them all at once.
Another thing I've seen is a "transition" car, with a knuckle at one end and rapido on the other, so the same idea applies, you don't have to switch everything at once.