Hi Stief,

I went back and read the Installer logs and rm -rf the directories and files it had installed (including some in the System/Library), then ran the 2.9.8 installer again. This time it acted more normally. Let me see what the process viewer says...
Hmm, yep, about 6% when just open and not searching or downloading. So, it looks like my big problem is fixed.

I still occasionally get "Unexpectedly quit" errors. Is the LimeWire team interested in getting things like the LimeWire.crash.log?

To answer some of your other questions, I don't think I can be an ultra peer, since I'm behind a NAT firewall. Most of the preference settings I just leave at default settings.

If I encounter slowness problems in the future, I'll try some of your suggestions.

Thanks!

blue