Limewire interface: 2 simple questions
 

New to Limewire (after unsuccessfully farting around with ISwipe forever!). Also just hooked up to high-speed cable modem, but I'm running 9.2 on an old Mac (9600/200). 2 questions about interfacing and appearance with Limewire:
1. My downloads of an average 3-4 minute song go fast, as quick as 60 seconds. But then this "Verifying File Contents" feature automatically kicks in, and takes easily 3-4 times longer than the actual download. Is it a necessary feature. If not, can it be disabled and go right to a saved file. If so, why is it taking so long, can it be speeded up. My son says, on his late-model Toshiba laptop with Win XP, it takes just a second or two for that Verifying process. Sort of defeasts the purpose of a high-speed 2 minute download if it takes another 6-8 minutes to finally be done with a file
2. On my interface, there's a greyed-out bar cutting right through the spot where the percentage-downloaded number is tallying, making it hard to read the actual percentage, like does that say 4% or 41%, that kind of thing. Any way to clean that up
Also, the Limewire app takes quite a long time to start up, 2-3 minutes from when I first double-click the icon to when I've got a search screen in front of me, and takes quite a pause from when I click on any action to when it actually carries it out. Is it just needed more system speed than I've got?
Thanks

RE