Hi Grandma

Welcome. The forum has been a bit inconsistent lately, but I'm surprised one of the Windows experts hasn't responded already.

Your searches tell me you have hit a RAZA source for your files. RAZA (Shareaza) can have long queues that don't work very well as you noted. I rarely get a successful download from RAZA, so usually end up killing that attempt.

The monitor tab shows what files (or parts of the file) are leaving your machine, as you correctly figured out. You can tell if you participated in a swarm if your monitor shows the file as "complete," but less than 100%.

Don't worry about the speed settings: they are mostly informative, and people's speeds vary depending on how busy they are.

If you are looking for the best times to download (usually evenings and weekends in North America), see the two charts at http://www.limewire.com/english/content/netsize.shtml As many as 1/2 a million people jump on and off the network over a few hours, so you can see why results vary

By the way, some people avoid T3's, since those seem to be the source of so many scam files. You can use the File menu's Disconnect/Connect commands to connect to a different set of hosts and maybe get better results.

Cheers--hope that starts to answer some of your questions