I can see a 91 year old defending a 2.5% download success rate on that thread?!?!

What I don't understand is that of the other filesharing progs I've tried, I was pretty much searching, clicking to downloading and off it went. Now, if I select a certain category of file, when the results come flying in, sometimes hundreds, I'll do everything that's been recommended I can think of:

I'm at home.
I'm uploading fine.
I'm downloading 4 star files.
I'm not filtering on host speed.
I'm on the network for many hours at a time, usually overnight.

However, where, for a given search I get a few files downloaded almost straight off, I can see no change then in over 8 hours, just awaiting sources. It isn't like the stuff I'm after is obscure either, not by a long shot.

Essentially I have a huge list of 'Awaiting Sources' that doesn't appear to attempt to refresh, and doesn't change unless I 're-search' which sometimes triggers a couple off again.

Why is the success rate so low against other filesharing systems I've tried?

What can I do about these awaiting sources, or files partially downloaded that don't seem to do anything for days at a time whenever I log on and leave it for a few hours hoping to pick something up?

It just seems like one can't do a search, see a load of files appear and then start downloading them. One gets a couple, then the others just go on the awaiting sources list.

I don't think I and other users are asking hard questions, we just want to know why it is we commonly and frequently get awaiting sources messages against popular files, and why nothing seems to happen for 8 or 9 hours at a time, where the files I'm hoping to start downloading number more than 50 across a range of interests. I could handle it if every few hours I saw one or two files making some progress, but its just the absolute stillness of this supposedly massive system, if it wasn't for the nightmarish advertising I'd leave, but before I do I'd like to know that I'm doing everything right.

Is there anyone here that is enjoying bounteous downloading, anyone at all?

I'm on Win98SE, adsl modem, running 3.3.5