What I don't like about these "eye-candy" distros is packaging--do they have the required human resources to ensure packages are always up to date, especially when security problems arise?

>You can also install any downloaded .deb file designed for the version of elementary OS (or underlying version of Ubuntu or Debian)

Installing external .deb packages is usually the worst idea: the application will break when the ABI of one of the linked libraries changes, for example.