maybe i am not the brightest bulb, but is it possible to listen to the tracks prior to download? i am using an imac with itunes.

nope, that's not possible. You should be able to listen to partially downloaded files however.

Another issue with the internal player used in Limewire is low sample rate recordings don't appear to play correctly 64kbs for example... they sound chopped up but the same files play fine when using Real Player or other external players.

What cheap-*** HD are you using ?
Choppy sound because of busy HD is the lamest excuse I heard sofar .

You can pick up a 40GB DeskStar 120GXP at IBM for 70 bucks !
And the 120GXP line is their top-model IDE disk .

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm

I have the 40GB model and SMART enabled .
I haven't had one single HD error yet .

Your processor is plain too slow .
This has nothing to do with your HD .
Replace that 400Mhz with something over 1 Ghz and you will see that the HD was not the cause of those "hiccups" .

Most PII motherboards also take PIII's . (the same socket)
And PIII's go up to 1.3 Ghz .
You can still upgrade that machine for a minimal amount of $$$

I would think adequate RAM would be an issue in performance also. I have always found there is a sweet spot in memory once you get to that point adding more RAM will not bring as great an improvement... but too little RAM can cause VERY suggish performance... in a case like this your PC may be swapping memory to the hard drive due to inadequate free RAM causing a real bottleneck due to contention for HD access.

Peerless, don't get fixated on just the physical amount of RAM. You may be able to tweak (overclock) that RAM you have, and see a difference in your pc's performance that you can actually notice. This depends on your BIOS and how much that it allows you to tweak.

If your RAM is PC100, check to see if your BIOS will allow you to set to run at 133mhz. Or perhaps you can increase your FSB incrementally by 1mhz at a time, however this capability is a longshot with an off-the-shelf system. But you could be lucky.

Also, and here is where you'll probably realize the most significant gains in performance, if you can select a CAS rating that is lower than your current setting, let's say going from CAS3 to CAS2, you'll be amazed. However, if your pc won't boot up after lowering the CAS and increasing the FSB, and you must choose between one tweak or the other, go with the lowered CAS rating, hands down.

I don't know if all that I am saying is old news to you or not, but I hope it helps.

Good luck, and I hope you can squeeze a little more performance out that dinosaur. And best of all, if you can, it didn't cost you a dime.

Hey, I agree, upgrading from 64meg oto 256 is certainly one of the best things you could have done to increase your pc's performance. I'm just trying to help, and I apologize, "fixated" was a poor choice of words.

I know this is getting away from this thread's topic, but I just want to quantify my earlier post.

Most RAM, if not all RAM will run @ a faster FSB than it is rated. If you have PC100, then the manufacturer guarantees your RAM to run @ 100mhz without errors, BSOD, etc. The CAS rating in layman's terms is how many clock cycles the RAM requires to perform it's READs and WRITEs. CAS3 requires 3 clock cycles, and CAS2 requires 2. So, if you have PC100 CAS3, and in your BIOS manually set it to CAS2, you'll effectively increase your RAM's speed by 30%! WOWIE! Using this method, only your RAM is overclocked.

However, if you overclock by increasing the FSB, you overclock EVERYTHING, the CPU, your modem, sound card, video card, and card in an expansion slot is overclocked. So, you may find that your CPU and RAM will be held back by some other component that is preventing you from oc'ing further.

An excellent site to visit for AMD overclocking is www.forumoc.com and for Inhel, ah hem, I mean Intel is www.hardocp.com.

Have fun, and remember: If it ain't broke, overclock it. :-)