which is's better

I personally like mandrake 9 better.
A lot of things were messed up in RedHat8 for me.
Mandrake has really good configuration utilities, and mandrake control center is really good. I just fond mandrake better for me.

i bought a red hat book,can it be used with mandrake

To an extent it can, but some of the specifics wouldn't work, though still, Mandrake and RH are much alike, though Mandrake is a superior system in my opinion.

I am truly confused as to why you posted this in hardware?

Are you wondering which one has better hardware handling abilities?

Well most of the hardware drivers are in the kernel in linux. This would mean that potentially all distros have the same abilities. HOWEVER, I cannot say that it works in practice like that, at least not until you figure linux out a bit.

Mandrake would seem to have better hardware detection, and easier to use tools to get the hardware setup properly (at least for a newbie).

I would have to agree with rufius, your book with work, but only a bit. The RH book was probably written assuming you have an RH system, so it will have alot of "how to's" where their exclusive tools are the ones they walk you through it with. For very basic/generic things though, you probably will find the book useful.

Again, I must ask, why in the Hardware section? Just seems odd for a question like this???

Cool