I noticed that Mandriva sells the 2010 distribution on a bootable flash drive for around $50 or so on their website. Is it me or is that sort of silly?

Is there anything special about this flash drive that makes it worth buying? Or is it just the same thing you would get if you just made your own bootable version? I mean, so far the only difference I see is that it's a nifty looking flash drive. Also, the fact that it says "Mandrive" makes me giggle.

I see some sort of 3D desktop thing going on, which I could care less about. So...what do you think? Useful tool or absurdly expensive 8gb flash drive?

It is a lot easier to just order one configured from Mandriva than do do it yourself. I messed up several times and could only blame myself when things went wrong. If I could afford it I would order one and send it back if it didn't work. The other plus side is that Mandriva could ensure that it was done right.
Myself, I make my own, save money and I enjoy it. Others it might be easier to order one.

if you want to do it easy and control costs the power pack is a good buy not spending all day installing getting things to work all done with in the hour.

Mandriva used to be/is the Linux distro that you would throw a few bucks at to make life easy on yourself (Powerpack). Most people have one skill that they are good at and they leave the stuff that they are not good at for others to do. When I had Mandriva 08 is was recommended as having the codecs with the original install files.Most beginners just want their DVD/CD player to work and not spend six months to figure it out how to get it to work for free.

Since the media stuff is a big hurdle for a novice why be upset about the principle of someone making a profit? Live disks are very handy and useful and a thumb drive is at least ten U.S dollars. If the release was not 2010 and worked well, fifty dollars for a live version on a thumb drive seems okay. A live version is usually ten dollars more if you buy it already burned for you and a DVD is usually ten dollars more.

So we have
$10.00 for live version
$10.00 for the thumb drive
Some times as much as $10.00 for the release on any kind of media from a source that burns it for you. So that leaves$20.00 for Mandriva to take care of these things for you and you can just plug the drive in.

I am looking forward to purchasing a live version of Mageia on a thumb drive when it is ready this summer.I don't plan on installing it on a hard drive but I like the combination of 1. thumb-drive 2. live version and 3. A Mandrake fork that may work as well as envisioned. If I can afford it at the time Mageia can gladly have fifty dollars of mine. The live version can get you out of a jam when you have major problems with the O.S that you are booting off a hard drive.