You have the choice of the free version or the pro version. There's not a lot of difference. The pro version gives you free updates & customer support for 6 mths. Try the free & if you like it go pro.

Unlike bittorrent you don't need to upld as much as you dwnld. But it is p2p so it's expected you share some files. What's more, if people are uplding from you then you will be able to connect to more people & get better search & dwnld results. Also some people filter out those that share less than 5, 50 or 500 files for example so you wouldn't be able to dwnld from them if you weren't sharing.

As far as speeds go it is dependent on many things such as who you are dwnlding from (eg- a dial up modem or cable) & how much upld bandwidth they have available or have allowed. Also if you have firewalls you'd need to configure them to allow both LW & Java access. http://www.limewire.com/english/content/firewalls.shtml Also if you have a nat modem/router it should have port 6346 opened for full LW access. Optimising LW can help in getting better results all round. Here's some hints: A well set-up LW can start to automatically continue its dwnlding after it's settled down perhaps 2 out of 3 times you open LW. Optimising LW & Maximising Uplds & Dwnlds A (1st post only) & also Part B which is even better & last & least are search & dwnld hints. The latter one I've been thinking about re-writing for some time. That's just for playing it safe. eg- I show all speeds & qualities.

Make sure you install an update version of Java before you install LW: Java 1.4.2 (click on link)
Dwnld LW from here: http://www.limewire.com/english/content/download.shtml