So can anyone not working for limewire tell me if Pro is actually any better?

We don't work for LW, this is a Gnutella forum & LW's just a Gnutella client

Whether Pro's going to make a big difference depends a bit on your setup. If you have a slow connection anyway, you're not going to see a big increase in download speed. Pro lets you connect to 5 ultrapeers instead of 3, which means the potential's there for better search results. It also lets you download from 10 hosts instead of 8 (14 if you have a T3 connection). So, the potential's there for faster downloads too.

Those are the differences between basic & Pro. People who search for rare files often find that Pro's much better. So you see...it depends on what you're looking for as well! For a lot of people, buying Pro's a bit like a donation towards the future development of LW.

If you use the forum search, you'll find heaps of older threads & opinions on this
It's always better to start off with the basic version. Get to know it & then upgrade to Pro if you want to, when you're sure you like LW. If you do decide to get Pro, make sure that you save the old installers...LW doesn't keep old versions available for download.