You're right, there's a few things LimeWire could do on the client side (that is, the downloader itself) to ease the burden on the uploader as well as help the downloader out by reusing the open connection. Namely, when it recognizes a host is busy, it could stop attempting to connect to it with any other downloaders, and when one download finishes, another downloader could reuse that same open connection to download the next file. Of course, a change like this would require some heavy infrastructure changes to the downloading code... It's something I've been wanting to do for quite awhile though, and it would help out both the downloader & uploader... so maybe it's finally time to do it.

Just a few observations: Hope these are clearer--I tried
-Browse host on myself only shows 3000/9713 files.
-LAN transfers of 500 KB/s (sweet--but sure messes up the averages in stats).
-With IP unforced, self and router show as UP's in connection pane. Firewall off on both machines. Decided to set both LW's with IP forced (still using different 5 digit port numbers).
-magnet for jum209 worked: built up to 8 sources, but didn't find the two being shared on my LAN. A search did, and the magnet entry then began downloading
-browse host on LAN shows 4 yellow stars and speed column as green "cable"; search results show 4 blue stars and green "ethernet"
-more than usual permissions repair needed after software update installed the new Java 1.4.1 update
-sharing 9713 files with most GUI options turned on uses ~156 MB memory (430 MB virtual); processor % really difficult to guage when jumping from 17-88% (1 second sampling). Browser and mail service unaffected.
-checking "Advanced " in stats returns Console:
/Applications/LimeWire/LimeWire.app/Contents/MacOS/LimeWire: kCGErrorFailure : *** Parser error line 1, character position 52
-both machines quickly and smoothly run up to ~3500 hosts (32 UP->UP; 30 UP-> leaf) but should ALL ever be incoming?
-Can't judge whether running two UP's on the same LAN helps others. UL speeds set to unlimited, 1 spot pp, 3-5 available.
-seeing some nice steady upload speeds to outside clients >50KB/s. YES!
- Can't close the "about" or prefs window if the dock is used to bring LW to the fore.
-LW resumes connections, DL's and UL's after force quit as if nothing happened. The .bak sure works well!
-Screen redraws are very quick, but switching panes lags somewhat.
-there's a LW 3.4.5 user (3 star modem) returning results based on only 1 of 3 search terms. Hacked?
-Both the jum and the official DMG's installed just fine-- the zero g installer was getting really tedious.

Bottom line--sweet! Thanks all. Looking forward to the magnet and dock fixes and whatever more goodies you have in store for us to test (private magnets? connection quality diagnostic? NIO?)

Dragging the Preferences window in LW Pro 3.5.6 beta after clicking on the dock icon gives a GUI freeze on both a Mac G3 and a G4 here. Opensourcer credits are skipped when the About box is opened the second time: Dragging the About window also triggers the freeze.

These are some wierd bugs. You can consistently cause the freeze to occur? Is LimeWire visible or minimized when you're opening the Preferences or About window? And by "opensourcer credits are skipped" do you mean they're not visible the second time you open the About window, or...?

Thanks for helping to test... we all want this version to be released ASAP, so these bugs are incredibly frustrating.

It's driving me nuts too. I've repeated it about 7 or 8 times, trying to isolate the steps, trying on the G3 and checking the minimal steps required against the G4
Open LW (set to not connect automatically)
Choose either About or Prefs
Drag window anywhere
Click on dock icon
Drag window again--freeze

Here's a screenshot of the "credits" glitch

Thanks for the detailed steps. Just to be absolutely 100% clear (since I'm not an everyday mac user and don't understand the lingo perfectly), you:
1) Open LimeWire (from the DMG installer?... does the same thing happen if you use the InstallAnywhere installer?)
2) Open either the Prefs or About window by choosing LimeWire -> Preferences or LimeWire -> About
3) Drag the Prefs or About window anywhere (specifically, you didn't drag the LimeWire window)
4) Click the LimeWire icon in the dock (that's the one that magnifies when you move the mouse over it?)
5) Drag the same Prefs or About window again, causing a freeze. Does the freeze make a spinning beachball and require a force-quit, or does the GUI just stop working?

Does this also happen with the Statistics window also?... It might just be a problem with Dialogs over Frames, but that'd be just bizarre.

Are there any other steps that can cause a freeze?.. such as replacing 3 & 5 with highlight some text or close and reopen the window, etc...

Thanks again very much.

1-LW is installed in my Applications folder
(running any app from a DMG is not recommended). [edit: same results with the InstallAnywhere installer on the G4; completely removing all traces of LW makes no difference either]
2-Right
3-just checked: not a required step.
4-Right.
5-The beach ball freeze won't allow either the about or prefs window to be closed, hidden,minimized or cancelled by either the mouse or the keyboard but the LW window and the topmost window can be dragged to different positions. Parts of the gui are still working--e.g., results in the Connections columns like time, messages, etc are changing, but I cannot switch panes or use any LW menu items, so have to force quit.
Console doesn't log any activity but Process viewer shows LW working actively.

I can't trigger the freeze using the Advanced stats window, nor by highlighting text and clicking oin the dock.

Clicking on other dock icons doesn't freeze the prefs or about window--looks like clicking only the LW dock icon is required.

It's sure good of you spending your evening on this--wish I could help more efficiently.

Sam--the missing opensourcer credits is a separate issue. The first shot shows the first time LimeWire->About Limewire is selected after starting LW.
The second shot shows the display after closing the window and choosing LimeWire->About Limewire again.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Believe it or not, we were able to isolate & fix the freezing bug. Turned out to be a problem with modal dialog boxes that were created from the application menu on OSX with Java 1.4.1. Thanks very much for the help in finding this problem, stief.

Unfortunately we didn't find what was causing the oddity of the list disappearing on the second open of the about window. Since it's not causing a terrible program freeze, and the credits are still listed on the first display (and always visible from other OSes), the fix for this will probably be in the 3.6 series.

Thanks!!

Nice update! Merci Sam, Adam, Stief, Jens and the other LW developpers for fixing that weird behaving in 1.4.1.

Ciao