The conslusions?
After using it for a few days, I have to say Puppy is a mixed bag. Some things are done really well, but other things are disappointing. On the positive side, Puppy has a clean look, is lightning-fast and very small, making it ideal for older hardware. It has a wide selection of tools which should take care of the needs of both everyday users and desktop administrators. On the negative side, Puppy has virtually no security, having the user run as root without a password and, near as I can tell, no package updates. There are relatively few PET packages to be had from the official repositories and Puppy doesn't connect to other repositories, such as Debian's or Slackware's.
My conclusion is that Puppy is an interesting live CD. It strikes me as a tool I could hand to a student taking a system admin course as a demo, or perhaps a Windows admin that needs the functionality of a Linux live CD. It's a tool which could be used to test old hardware; perhaps to wipe or backup drives. It's not a distribution I'd recommend installing on a hard disk or using as a day-to-day operating system or even connecting to the Internet. Its strengths lie in its small size and friendly approach to Windows users, not everyday use.