Sorry for the delay in the response --

NIO: NIO is a HUGE change. It is essentially a complete rewrite of the internal message processing. The payoffs are large, but not large enough to stop development on other areas while we finish NIO & fix any bugs that might have crept in. NIO will make it in at some point, but not for 4.0.

Connection Meter: The problem with themes is that they each have their own images, so images that are introduced now have to use 'fallback images' -- ones that exist if the theme doesn't have them. We can go through and add theme-specific images for the connection meter (and anything else that's new), but for the connection meter specifically I don't think it's necessary. Red/Green is pretty universal for disconnected & connected, and LimeWire's adopted blue as a 'turbo' color.

NPE's & Magnets: We'll look into it before the next beta.

Sending bug reports: It doesn't hurt to send them a lot. We prioritize bugs based on how many we received (and how many unique clients they come from). So if we see a lot of bugs, it probably means it's a problem affecting lots of people lots of times. There's always some wierd case where a single client gets a really rare bug that's repeated 500 times... but it doesn't happen too often.

Helping Gnutella: LimeWire's pretty smart about what will help the network the most. It will create and remove Ultrapeers as needed. I think sharing files is the most important thing for network growth.

Force IP: So long as each machine is set up correctly on the Linksys router for port forwarding (to different ports), it should be fine. I have succesfully forwarded to a W2k and OSX box that are behind the same router.

Upload Throttling: We'll look into how feasable it is to ignore throttling on ethernet transfers.

Browsing: Yeah, there's some wierd things with browsing. We'll look into it.

Ethernet Transfers: I noticed the same phenomena transferring files from my PC to my Mac behind the router. I don't think it has any adverse effect -- it's just a different way of advertising the address. None of them should hit the ISP I don't think.

Thanks,
Sam