i have just began using limewire and have a few problems (most of which may be the result of slow dial up isp).
(1) On the search page the column that is labeled #, what is it's significance?

(2) Do I want to download the majority of songs in the mp3 format? (advantages of this?)

(3) Speed column. I have dialup that runs at incredibly slow 24kbs, whick speed do I need to choose? Does it matter? I think that I am the 'weak link' in this sharing link, so does it matter which speed i utilize?

(4) Does bit rate impact me at all?

I believe every song i have thus downloaded has had at least 1, if not several, blank bits in it. Is this a consequence of my dialup or it this something that is problematic to all lime downloads.

Any and all replies and suggestions are appreciated!!

Thanx, Bone

1. # represents the number of people who your search found have that file.
2. Up to you. If you're going to burn them, then most popular burner programs will happily convert them. It's the most popular format for portable devices & on computers. m4a/mp4 audio is the newer format which has improvements.
3. It will be easier to set speed settings if you choose modem connection.
4. Bit rate refers to the mp3 music. It ranges up to 320 kbps. The higher the better the quality of the encoding.

4 contd- The higher the bit rate, more space it takes up. 128 is CD quality so I usually go with that

128 is not cd quality. AIFF or WAV files which are 1411 kbps is CD quality. And personally I won't touch a mp3 at 128 kbps.
With people having many GB's of space including on their portable mp3 players, small files is a thing of the past. Now people want quality not pewnee size & quality wma or mp3 files that sound like someone's filtered them through a wall.

You can make almost perfect CD quality mp3's at 320 kbps but it's a bit advanced. There is a guide but I won't post it here due to legality issues + ripping a cd in that quality takes about 30 minutes and setting up the software takes closer to an hour