thanks for the reply stief. can you be a bit clearer fo r silly old me. i was just checking my firewall prefs in system prefs and none of my options are selected (i am on an ibook) which ones do i need to check to get better/faster results? is there any inherent danger in opening up the firewall? i couldn't see any spcific info in the users forum relating to this for mac users. i appreciate your time so if you think i should be educating myself soemwhere else, like www.figureitoutyourself.com just point me in the right direction.
thanks again