as has been said before, you are not likely to NOTICE much difference (but it is still there), especially if you have a really good connection, like a T3 or better. Are you on a modem connection?

Couple of other points:

searches connect to more hosts with Pro, so for rare files, you can search more of the network, and should thus get a *bit* better results, especially if that file is just beyond the current horizon. This is a touchy feature: programs that try to search the *entire* network can clog the traffic, resulting in poor performance for everyone. LW Pro allows a bit more, but are ready to kill that feature if it hurts the network (if too many people start using the Pro settings). If the querying is too aggressive, clients may trigger automatic banning. Check to see how many ultrapeers are connected in the connections window to compare Pro and Basic. For modem users, I would guess connecting to more ultrapeers might even hurt downloads, since each connection uses up a bit of scarce bandwidth. Not sure how the developers figured out how to give the Pro modem users a bit of an advantage here.

Downloads are NOT exactly the same: connecting to more hosts for the downloads increases your chance that one or two of those hosts will be faster (if your connection can handle more). As a modem user, there's not much difference, since most hosts provide at least a couple of KB/s for their upload. With a T3, though, downloading from 14 hosts (Pro max for a T3) usually means the file comes in faster than downloading through 10 (Basic max for a T3). I can't remember what the modem settings allow.

SKIN--I guess some like that option (I use the same one no matter what version of LW), but for me too it's no biggie.

Nags? Sheesh--turn the update message notification in the options to major releases only! Unless you are using some OS like pre OS X 10.3, you need to know about those. If not, ask in the feature requests forum to be able to disable those messages.

Re who get the money for the Pro:?--it's at least used to reward the open sourcers who contribute to the project, hire interns, and keep several developers working full-time. Not all those million lines of code were written by volunteers. see http://www.limewire.org/awards.shtml

Do check out the www.limewire.org page before you decide to start publically dissing the way this open source project is funded. Pro "donations" have proven themselves as a good way to sustain this project, and are way better than the adware model that was tried before.