I'm happy to share my files, but I'm concerned that my surfing speed is taking a big hit while I am connected. Can I put the uploads on hold when speed is a issue and then let people back in when I'm not actively browsing? What about when my machine goes to sleep, do people get booted?

Well, yes, your surfing speed will take a hit. There's no way to put uploads on hold besides stop sharing files. When your machine goes into a full sleep, that is, not just the monitor going to sleep, yes, Limewire will disconnect I believe.

Thank you for replying, Blackbird. I was in my first 24 hours as a member of the lw community when I posted this thread, and it shows. Newbies!

Anyway, I have dled the OSX specific version of lw by jum, but there was no app in the folder. I was unsure if I was supposed to just copy it over the original, or if it was programed to only rewrite certain components. I put the original in the trash and tried again, but still no dice. If I can get that worked out, maybe I'll see a jump in performance.

In the meantime, I adjust my bandwidth slider when I want to surf and open it wide when I'm "offline." It seems to work, but certainly not as well as if I simply don't launch until I'm done with my other business. I had turned off the ultrapeer setting, as I've seen suggested, but it just seemed contrary to the spirit of the network.

I also disabled my energy saver sleep mode to keep from cutting people off. I left my machine on all night last night, but this morning I was stuck in the spinning rainbow disc of death.

Forgive my rambling, but I've one more issue. (Two, if you count the failed dl of Adobe's new Reader. It keeps quitting immediately upon launch, and I trashed my older one!) I was wondering if you can browse your own library somehow, without going to a different machine. And can you bookmark a hosts location to continue browsing it at a later time, or go to a specific host if you have their id number?

Sorry for the deluge of questions, I really should wait until after I've got my userguide working to see if these issues are addressed. My only excuse is an excess of enthusiasm for becoming a competant user. Thanks in advance for any imput or suggestions you might have for me.

To install the LW by Jum, simply drag the folder called "Limewire" onto your harddrive. It's called a Dragndrop install, you'll see them becoming more common in OS X.

The bandwith slider thing can work. Yes, disabling ultrapeer will help reduce your downloading bandwith very much, and your uploading to a certain extent. However, excluding content, the ultrapeers with the new compression only do about 8k/s upstream and downstream in messages. That's not very much on a high speed connection.

Yeah, after about 48 hours, I get a spinning wheel of death too.

Limewire in no way, shape or form condones the illegal downloading of copyrighted programs. I assume, when you (carelessly) mentioned some of the content you downloaded, that you held the license to it, or had purchased it previously.

Browsing hosts. I suppose one could log the IP address of the host, connect to the host, and if successful (they might not have an open slot) search for a file you know they have, and then browse.

I did drag the folder into my apps folder, and once it had copied, I opened it to launch the new version of LimeWire for the first time. Didn't see an application icon. It's probably just a snafu. I'll try again from the beginning.

I'm afraid I don't get this. I understand that not acting as an ultrapeer will reduce the drag on my system. The next part elludes me, as I'm unfamiliar with any sort of specifics about the speeds associated with internet connections.

If it wasn't clear from my wording, I apologize for the apparent indescretion , but Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free download that one could use to review the LimeWire user guide PDF I was refering to. I am up and running on that front, so I promise not to bother you with any more silly questions.

The newest issue I've identified won't be covered though. It is the possibility that all off my crashes and freezes, which I believe are software related, are hurting my star-system rating. I wish it weren't the case, but I frequently have to force quit in order to get out of spinning disc mode. I know this abrubtly disconnects folks. I can't imagine a way to fix this. I'll keep my fingers crossed that jum's app does the trick.

Thanks again, Blackbird.

PS - The smilies were a one time experiment, I promise.

Disabling ultrapeer, may, depending on your machine, drastically reduce CPU usage, but not really internet use, although on my computer, there is a perceptible difference when browsing with LW and without.

Sorry about Acrobat, I had thought you had dled the full version.

Somethine that seems to keep me alive longer is to disable all the of the window tabs (i.e. Monitor, Connections and Library).