Well I got Mandrake 9.1 RC2 installed.  I've got good and bad issues. 

KDE 3.1 kicks arse!  It looks very good.  And the new fonts are finally 
very good looking.  Normally I don't care that much about my fonts, but 
these are so good they are startling.  At least on my desktop.  I'll get 
to my laptop in a moment.  The install is even more simplified than 
before, for better or worse.  Using my USB camera locks the system and I 
have to do a hard reset.  So, that's not good, but I'm not sure if it's 
this release, or a hardware problem.  I don't have it doing 3D 
acceleration using my nForce on-board graphics yet, but I have yet to 
install the nVidia drivers.  Most stuff I've tried works just great.  So 
there's good and bad on the desktop.  Overall, I'd say it's fairly 
solid.  We always seem to focus on the negative.

Back to the laptop.  I tried to upgrade the 9.0 release I had installed 
there, and that failed, so I ended up just doing an install, formating 
the / and saving the /home.  This laptop is just for playing and taking 
to KCLUG meetings, so no big deal.  So, now I'm on this new release 
expecting everything to look as nice as it does on the desktop, and the 
fonts look like total crap!  They are barely readable.  I've tried 
several things like anti-aliasing, different fonts, changing my 
resolution, my monitor choice, etc. but nothing makes them any better.  
This is not good.  I need to files some reports, I know.  At least I 
know where to go to use bugzilla, qa.mandrakesoft.com.  :-)

I'll let you know if I get any of these problems worked out.

Peace,
Jim