I'm a new user and by new I mean new. I installed Mandrake 9 on Friday (14th Feb 2003), after weeks of having nothing but problems frow my Windows system.
Are you using mandrake 9.0 or one of the recent 9.1 betas? Which desktop?
I have 9.0 using kde 3.0 on a laptop and there is an icon on the desktop for removeable drives - allows me to access CDs with no problem. May not be like that for you as Mandrake can be inconsistent (although the trade-offs are worth it to me).
Syd