redhat 7.2 and 7.3 are still a standard for businesses, and schools.
7.2 is said to still be one of the best distro's ever made
I used to run 7.3, and I loved it, everything that it came with worked great, my best friend is a Networking student at a university up hear (UCFV)
and he still swears by 7.2 for networking, he uses SuSE for other stuff, but that's just a prefrence, I'm not saying he uses SuSE because RH sucks.
and besides the nice thing about Linux is that you can basically turn REDHAT 7.2 into something that runs like RedHat 9
just download the latest Kernel and compile it and then get the latest KDE and Gnome, along with an update of the programs you use most often
Your really going to enjoy RedHat, and Linux in general!