Yeah, when it gives you a choice of keyboard layouts, you need to choose "American English", as that's what the majority of the people are using. If you select anything else, you'll notice that some keys don't work or give out unexpected results. To change the keyboard layout temporarily without rebooting the X server, use this command:
You can change it permanently (at least for X) by editing xorg.conf:
It might be difficult to do if your keyboard's set to the wrong layout, though...

i know it annoys me. i have a british keyboard but on the usa one, pipe,slash,hash,@ and quotation marks are all wrong

i feel really stupid when i randomly choose the keyboard. hehehe
there was one setup when puppy ask me if i have a mouse wheel. In my mind i was using an optical mouse. so enetered no. and when puppy started i cant use my mouse and since i enetered the wrong keyboard config. i was not able to do anything.

lol try pclinuxos its good (its a livecd so you can try it out, then you have the option to install) - the newest 0.93a BigDaddy has some nice vista-like effects and loads of software like limewire, bittorrent, openoffice etc.....

try using magiciso to burn iso file to cd. It can work.
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-burniso.htm

did you use bigdaddy in the end?

well i tried it a few times already. but i had problems when i install open office and other software. The os crashes.

im using it as live cd only

thats as when you install sonething onto a livecd, you are installing it into your RAM essentially, and openoffice is a couple of hundred megs worth.