I understand your frustration, but I don't think Limewire is a scam. It has worked flawlessly for me, for over a year and a half. There are several reasons that people have problems. Your ISP can have a huge impact on P2P useage. The problem with this is that they won't tell you directly and they might not tell you at all. Other reasons are Firewall issues, modem/routers that might also have a NAT firewall that has to be configured and several more things I'm sure, but If there is anything that we can help you with, please let us know.
Also you say, "so many people". What you see here in this forum is a minute (Adjective) sum compared to the millions that are using Limewire.

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I Don't Suffer From Insanity, I Enjoy Every Minute of it

Well I wish you all the best. I have been a member of LW for over three years and up until about a year ago I never had any problems. I have not made any changes to my system and yet for the past year I can only connect about one in twenty times I try. I am no computer geek but I do know a thing or two about computers and I know enough to know that none of the things you suggested have changed on my computer from the time I was able to connect to the time I started having the connection problems. Also, after I posted my comment, my LW connection suddenly went from "starting to connect" to "turbo-charged connection" and I made no changes to anything and I have tried to connect three other times today with no success. The last time I tried to connect it remained at "starting to connect" for about 45 minutes and then miraculously it became turbo charged. Maybe it's not a scam, I'm just frustrated and don't get it!