Among the new features that have been added since I took up LimeWire a short time ago:

1. Swarmed downloads. Downloading from multiple locations thus speeding up the download.

2. Ultrapeer functionality that reduces the bandwidth for a leaf allowing more/faster downloads and uploads and potentially providing a greater search horizon.

3. Communications improvements that will improve performance as more people use clients that support it.

4. Improved download performance that reduces/prevents downloads being blocked (frequently at 99% of download).

5. Corruption checking - essential for downloading programs.

6. Penalising freeloaders (encouraging more people to share files).

7. More frequent re-searches to find new file hosts to download from.

I think there may have been other improvements that reduce the number of restarts.

These changes seem to be directed at "making it easier to download files".

The introduction of Hashing (rumoured to be coming in 2.5) will also be a massive boost to the ease of downloading.

Mark