What I want to do is install say Suse linux on a machine, then install a couple of applications I want to preconfigure. Then I want to backup that install and config to CD or DVD and be able to use those CD's or DVD's to boot and install my preconfigured version of Suse with the applications etc on a different machine and only have to configure the hardware in the install process.

I want to be able to give these CD's to my clients and have them take the CD's to machines they have and get a preconfigured server from those CD's

I have seen Mondo. Does anyone think that Mondo or something else can do the job.

(Or is this a dream! :-( )

I know with Windows you can use Sys Prep and Ghost to do this and it works very well (which is shocking)

You can using PartImage working off Knoppix. You can image the partitions into cdrom size chunks and then write them to cd. The only downside to this is that the image is an exact replica and therefore size as well which could be inconvenient on variable size drives. I keep backups of my partitions like this "just in case"

I haven't used Mondo so far but I can recommend you dar. It's a great tool, it supports differential backups, you can slice your backup into multiple files of whichever size you want and also has gz and bz2 compression support, encryption as well. Lots of other features.
Also it comes with a pretty well written tutorial.

Go check it at http://dar.linux.free.fr/