I've got a similar setup, but found dl speed to really depend on the speed of the host sharing the file. If I can get lots of sources for a file, the downloads can hit >100KB/s--just about my max. Then again, a rare file from a firewalled or often busy modem can be ~1KB/s or less.

Can't comment on the advertising (I still get Pro just to support the open source LW project), but downloads are definately better than earlier this year, and the 3.6 versions are pretty good. I did try a free version, and can't say I saw alot of difference, but that means so little since dl's are mostly controlled by the slowest host.

Just keep searching for files with lots of sources.