SuSE uses RPM for packaging. In practice, they ship many more packages than Red Hat or Mandrake. But it is harder to find third-party RPMs for SuSE.
As one concrete example, I've found it difficult to get MPlayer packages for SuSE Linux 8.0. I could use the Red Hat 7.2/7.3 packages linked by the MPlayer project. These actually work okay, but the build environment is non-standard (a Red Hat 7.2 host with GCC 3.0.1 added on).
One of the major annoyances of Linux is the lack of greater binary compatibility. To continue the MPlayer example, it's easier to find current RPMs for the latest OS version: 8.1. While these may work with 8.0 or older, you may have to override package dependencies to install (which is half the purpose of packages).
Some of these binary incompatibilities are unavoidable, for example a migration from glibc 2.1 to 2.2. However, a large part of it is due to the culture of open source development. Since the expectation is that the source code is always available, it matters less if binary packages are not universal. But witness the umpteen RPMs Nvidia used to release for its Linux drivers, even though the drivers themselves are largely compatible across any Linux system (they've just moved to a more manageable release model).
In practice, for the MPlayer issue I described (or for Nvidia drivers), I try to find RPM source packages, and I'll compile my own RPMs. In practice, there are but a handful of packages that effect this problem (the overwhelming majority are shipped with the distribution). But to some extent, as much as I appreciate a good package system, I could possibly save a lot of time if I could just "double-click on an .exe installer" that simply works.
One of the main benefits of Red Hat and SuSE that many people overlook or don't care for is that these two hosts have the broadest commercial support for proprietary software. For example, if I need to install Oracle or a popular application server, then I'm virtually guaranteed the most testing and official support for recent RH and SuSE OS's. Even unofficial support (i.e. mailing lists or Google searches) will be more prevalent for these distros with mainstream commercial acceptance (and partnerships).
If all I wanted was to run a typical LAMP system, then just about any distribution would be perfectly adequate (some more than others) with the default bundled packages. But to summarize, in my experience, SuSE is a very capable workstation/desktop OS with few drawbacks.
The system takes quite a while to get up and running but it also has an excellent portage system. 
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