What's the difference between the two, should I just sit out a couple more weeks or months and wait for the official edition, or does the CE work just fine?

It's always a good idea to wait until the official version comes out. The idea behind the community edition is that it is for people (mandrake fans/developers) who want to try out the next version of mandrake early and report bugs.
Sure people can install the CE and use it, but its name I feel is a bit misleading.. it should be called bugfix edition, or testing edition.. The official version is supposed to have the bug fixes and updates in place, found through the problems that arise through the community release period.

If you cant afford/justify buying membership or a pack, there are already lots of places that will sell you copies of the official GPL version.

Thanks, thats all I needed to know. I'm gonna wait it out and go with the 10.1 official dloads, once released to the public. Anyone got any idea when they'll be available for us (without paying for membership or buying pack, of course)

Here here!!!

You can do an ftp install to get it right away. (download the boot.iso, burn it to a cd, and select the ftp install)

Or if you want the CD's, they'll come out 3 weeks from oct 27th. Or sometime next week I think

A marvelous thing that boot.iso file!

You can get copies cheap on ebay too. Good for peeps, like me, that have slow dial-up. I just bought a copy and am sooooo excited about checking out the upgrades.

Maybe it is a little OT here, bot how to upgrade from community to official _without_ downloading official isos? I know it's possible somehow by deleting all package sources, adding main source for official and invoking some urpmi command. I've done this with 10.0 and then I've found the solution in the mandrake forums, but it seems like you have to be registered now to search them.

Download the boot.iso for 10.1, and do a regular FTP install. Instead of selecting the "install" option, select the "upgrade" option