These "50 Movie Packs" are a "Deal". 50 movies on 12 double sided DVDs for a lot less than $1
each. Some of these same movies are being sold in retail stores for between $5 to $15 each.

As to the movie quality, "your mileage will vary". Some are good, most are watchable and there
are a few stinkers {"The Sign Of Four"}. These are NOT classics, like the "Maltese Falcon" is
a classic. They are classics, just because they are old (and marketing by TreeLine).
These are black & white "B Movies" from the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s.

TreeLine Films does a good job of transferring them to DVD. They appear to have found films in
the best condition to do the transfers from. However it appears TreeLine did NOT do any
post-processing to the DVDs; to clean up past imperfections. The Historical Purists, will be
glad to know all the scratches in the films, lighting problems and audio aberrations have been
faithfully preserved, intact. There is only one option, "Scene Selection". The movies are
only broken into four separate scenes. It barely beats "Fast Forward". But, adding options
and doing post-processing clean up would have added to the overhead of production and resulted
in a lessening of "The Deal".

"A Picture" movie stars are sprinkled throughout all these movies. Remember, from the 30s to
early 50s, the Movie Studios ruled. For this period (before TV) outside of the movies, your
evening entertainment options were; going out to a nightclub/bar or staying home to listen to
the radio, read a book or watch the grass grow from your porch. The studios cranked out a lot
of pictures during this period. They liked to keep all their stars working and at times any
picture would do. This was movie making, assembly line style to fill the demand. In this
"50 Movie Pack" are some of the results of those times.

I bought this, because of the Basil Rathbone, Sherlock Holmes movies. Basil Rathbone was the best
Holmes, until Jeremy Brett came along to do Holmes. People will buy these DVDs; because they are
deals, because of their nostalgic value, and because they are movie buffs. {BTW, there is a
lot of real history buried in these films with regards to their context and perspective,
ex., Japan & Great Britain were buddy-buddy, prior to WWII.}

My caveats, I've only viewed 8 of the 50 movies so far. I suspect it will take me the rest of
the year to view them all. They are good filler for when there isn't something better to
watch or do. Not likely, I'll ever get around to the "Nancy Drew" movie. I'm also going to
buy some of the other "50 Movie Packs", but for varying reasons.

My recommendation is, this is a good book for a Linux novice or someone starting with Fedora for the first time.
Those with experience, will probably want to pass on this book. Its not likely you'll pick up anything new
(I didn't). (For those unfamiliar with what Red Hat has done with the split out of Fedora; think of
Fedora Core 1 as Red Hat Linux 9.1 or 10; if Red Hat had continued the product line.)

This book focuses on the "NEW" Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core 1 Linux user. The book is a relatively
easy read. Bill McCarty writes a clear and well organized book. From a novice's perspective, the author gives
you, what you need to get Fedora installed, running and usable. The author does a good job of pointing
the reader at additional information sources on each topic. The book is short, less than 300 pages.
This is nice compared to some of the other 1,000 page plus Linux novice tomes; which try to be a "how to get
started" book and a "general reference" all at they same time; except they don't do either well. Linux should
be friendly, not scary. First timers shouldn't have to read a Encyclopedia to get started in Linux. I agree
with the author's choice of brevity for his book.

One suggestion to the author, would be to include output examples with the CLI (Command Line Interface) examples.
He does it with the GUIs, so why not with the CLIs???

I bought the book because "Red Hat Enterprise" (RHE) was in the title. I was disappointed in the fact there wasn't
more detail about RHE. In retrospect, anyone doing RHE, is probably an experienced Linux person working for a
company, where RHE is deployed and may even have had formal training on RHE. So why would they need this book?

My bona fides; I've been using been using various flavors of Unix for an embarrassing long time, Red Hat Linux
for 8 yrs (from release RH 3.0.3 to 9) and I have been running Fedora Core for about 5 months now.

"Linux Power Tools" is NOT like "Unix Power Tools" published by O'Reilly. If you were expecting the same, you'll
be disappointed. Otherwise this is a good general Linux book, which takes it up a notch. To quote the author,
Rodrick W. Smith in his intro, "This book is written for experienced Linux or Unix users who want to take their
general knowledge of Linux to the next level." The author does a good job on focusing on this target and still
keeping the book to around 600 pages.

Author covers the five Linux distros; Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian and Slackware on the Intel 32-bit platform.
If you are a Linux novice who wants to move up from Linux intro books and/or plan to use the five covered Linux
distros, then this is a good book for you. If you're focusing on one single specific Linux distro, you might be
better off settling on another book covering just that distribution.

If you've plenty of Unix/Linux experience you may want to thumb through this book before deciding to buy it.

Don't expect any subject to be covered real deep. Author covers the defaults, the easy setups, and the common
setups. Many of the chapters (topics) are books unto themselves. The author starts many of his chapters with
this same caveat. If you need more depth on a specific subject, the author references some URIs (URLs) and
some other titles to consult.

Rodrick W. Smith, has written a number of other good books ("Linux Hardware Book" & "The Multi-Boot Configuration
Handbook"). This one is also well written. I especially like the opinions he's expresses on various applications
and releases. I wish he would have included more. Examples are good. More examples would have been nice.
But I suspect it was another trade-off in keeping the number of pages down. Personally I found the info on USB,
scanners, audio and kernel hacking to be useful to me.

Setting up a Red Hat Internet Server? Then "Red Hat Linux
Internet Server" is the book for you. I had previously read Red
Hat Press's "Red Hat Linux Networking and System Administration"
by Collings and Wall. Though a good book, I had expected a bit
more from one blessed by Red Hat. "Red Hat Linux Internet
Server" does live up to its expectations of being blessed by Red
Hat. "Red Hat Linux Internet Server" is the better of the two
books.

This book is better focused on its subject of setting up an
Internet server and its more common Internet services. There is
lots of practical advice based on what is considered SOP for good
Unix/Linux Internet server schemes. (From my own experiences, I
did not find anything to disagree with them on and I liked their
take on learning the CLI first before going off into GUI-land.)
At least a quarter of the book is focused on security (a good
thing). I suspect this has much to do with Jay Beale, being from
the Bastille Project. Noteworthy are chapter 3 on setting up
DSL, chapter 10 on the Postfix mail server and chapter 13 doing
backups via Amanda.

If you are new to Red Hat Linux and can afford it, buy both
books. If you've been around awhile in the Red Hat world, then
Sery & Beale's book is the better choice.