November 16, 2004, 11:44P
Observations, and question answering to follow:
Music is subjective, so everyone's going to have a difference of opinion on it. I, personally, can't stand the saccharine music on DDR as much as the wider variety in types of music that Pump has. Granted, if you don't like K-pop, latin, or Banya's use of the same samples in every song they make, I can see why someone could hate it. That's why there's different dance games.
As far as pad layout is concerned; to me, 5 panels seems more natural. I don't know why that is (maybe because I started on Pump, and didn't get on a DDR machine until a half a year later). All I know is, doubles is a lot more intuitive to me on Pump (not to mention costing only one credit... 
since hardly anyone turns on joint premium...).
As for latest version, it's Exceed. Exceed 2 is due, I think, in January.
D&B has a specific deal with Andamiro which covers most all of their establishments (except for one Dallas, and one California location which both have DDR). Andamiro gives them a discount on group purchases on equipment and upgrades, which is why D&B always gets the latest version (even for testing purposes... Cincy's D&B was first, along with Dallas, to test PREX2 in the US [when it was called Extra Plus], for example).
As far as the menu system goes in Exceed (which I do agree isn't well explained), blue arrows always change a selection within a menu option, red arrows always go backwards to a previous menu selection, and yellow step goes forward in selecting items. So, if you wanted to choose Dignity (and decide to pass on it because of its insane difficulty), you press a red arrow to switch 'channels' from Banya to K-Pop, then a blue arrow to go to Dignity, the yellow step to bring up the difficulties, blue steps to select difficulty, yellow step to play selected difficulty. If you don't like the difficulties and want to choose a different song, press a red arrow. That takes you back to song selection. Pressing the red arrows again switches channels (since it's the topmost menu).
If you think that is difficult, then when Exceed 2 comes out it gets worse. There will be three initial channels of 'Arcade', 'Remix', and 'Battle'. Arcade takes you to the main game mode (like mentioned above). Remix takes you to the return of Non-stop remixes (15 remixes, some returning from older machines, 2 remixes per credit). Battle takes you to the new battle mode, where there are 4 battle modes (Item, Velocity, Minesweeper, and Hybrid). Velocity changes the speed of the arrows if you steps on 'crossbones', Minesweeper is just like Stepmania's mines mode, Item combines all the different modes, and Hybrid I'm not sure what it does yet.
Confusing?