I think Limewire has been, and is still, going through a bad patch in its OSX version (Java-based applications do tend to be a bit slow anyway). I actually stopped using LW 2.9.8 and OS10.2.5 because not only did my eMac slow to a crawl, it repeatedly crashed when LW was in ultrapeer mode. My experience suggests that changing the upload commitment makes no substantial difference and, after experimenting, I leave it at maximum to support the Gnutella ideal. Running as a leaf only was an improvement. However, I'm now running LW2.9.10 on OS10.2.6 and things are a little better than before with other internal applications running, but put another net package up and that slaps the brakes on again with that colourful little wheel spinning away as if we have to wait for the resident hamster to complete its exercise routine before anything else can interwork on the net.

So the moral of this is: by all means try changing the upload commitment as et voila suggests — it might work for you — but either use the most recent version of LW or drop back to earlier versions as a temporary fix (temporary because, in the next few upgrades, Limewire will start limiting its traffic to hosts running the most current LW versions) and don't run your e-mail and Explorer/Netscape software at the same time.