Originally Posted by pixelpainter

First off.. I have a cable connection.. quite fast

next is making sure enough people are sharing files... look for more seeders... this is because people that are seeding already have the complete file... as opposed to Leechers.. they sharing parts of the files they are currently downloading, which means if they do not have the parts you need it will do you no good.
always look for more seeders.. for better download speeds

I often won't bother if enough people are not sharing file.. but will look for another version.

do not try to download too many files simultaneously, it really isn't worth it, if I have a lot of files in my torrent list to download... I never download more than 2 at a time... in the long run it is much faster.

I'm not sure about this, but I set my global connection as follows...
for example....if I set my maximum global connections to around 1200... and I am downloading 2 files.. then I set my maximum number of peer connections to 600 a piece.
which is 1200 divided by the amount of files I am downloading.

Usually you do not want to set these settings much higher as it will not benefit you much and will tend to bog everything down.. and possibly crash the program or system.
Lastly be careful of how you set your upload speed.. there is a fine line as to what will not slow you down and still give decent upload speeds. you will have to play around with this setting based on your own connection.
I set mine between 28-32 as my upload speed is significantly lower than my download speed, and setting this too high can kill your bandwidth.

Personally I have never managed to achieve downloads that have been faster than Utorrent, it is also particularly secure as torrent programs go. It is very lightweight and can be run off a usb flash drive.. the executable is tiny, and can run as a standalone program without having to do an install.