When installing Red Hat 6.1 on a Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop using the updated pcmcia + updates disks, anaconda bombs out consistantly right before package selection with an error. I've found this to occur with the original pcmcia image as well. I've found that this occurs with both a local mirror of the Red Hat 6.1 cd, as well as remote mirrors. Note that while it bombs out on an ftp install, the http install works well.
My guess would be that this is the result of either A) losing the connection to your FTP server or B> performing the install against a FTP server running wu-ftpd-2.6 (this is from memory, so don't quote me on this one) In the first case, the installer did not handle timeouts really well, and since the FTP installer creates a new FTP session for every package that it downloads (the behavior has been improved in the latest installer) there is a good chance that your FTP server is timing out at some time. In the second case, there is a known conflict between the installer and wu-ftpd which results in very bad things (tm). The HTTP install actually used the exact same code that the FTP installation method does, so I would have to assume that since the HTTP installer is working, it is not a code problem. Reopen this bug if you are continuing to have problems after the above notes.