back again. i just read Birdy's post about VLC player and the new Limewire version that allows us to use VLC to preview files, and now see you have posted too. My current limewire is version 4.12.6

Using Realplayer as the default, and previewing files in it, would not work because most of the files i've tried to preview either haven't opened at all, or their appearance is messed up. therefore i would cancel the download, thinking the file was bad. this is not the case, as the same files play well in VLC. i am just going to have to try limewire 4.13 sometime after i've finished with my current downloads.

Is six hours for two x 700MB files normal? My ADSL is not particularly slow nor fast. Limewire site says the longer you are online the faster/better your downloads should get. The 'speed' on limewire ranges from 17-30 kb/s when the adsl usually allows downloads from the internet at 50 kb/s.

hope to see you around too, and thanks for making me welcome and for your help.

Cat.