cheaper Mandrake upgrade?

[sethg at ropine.com (Seth Gordon)]

A year or so ago, when my wife bought a new Dell laptop and wanted it 
defenestrated, I bought a copy of Mandrake Linux 9.2.  I don't feel like 
I got a terribly good "value add" for the money--in particular, the 
fancy friendly auto-configurator didn't recognize our wireless Ethernet 
card--but maybe time has blurred my memory of all the headaches I had 
installing Debian on my own laptop.

Anyway, my last attempt to upgrade or install RPMs didn't work and 
actually led to some of the menus in the Gnome application launcher 
being corrupted.  I assume this is because the latest official version 
is 10.1, and even the unofficial mirrors have stopped tracking 9.2.

An official copy of "Mandrakelinux 10.1 Powerpack" costs $85, and a 
subscription to their update service is $20 per year.  If I get the CDs 
from CheapBytes for $9, am I going to miss anything important?

-- 
"If John Kerry was the last best hope for the Republic ... then maybe
  it wasn't worth saving in the first place.  I don't believe that,
  though. And neither do you." --Dan Layman-Kennedy
// seth gordon // sethg at ropine.com // http://dynamic.ropine.com/yo/ //