All programs do the same work at the same "speed".. what changes is how do you config them and your modem. For example, puting 1000 conections each torrent may cause slow download.. the max u need is about 500 (1mb conections)..and the others things.. disabe firewalls, activate encrypt, for XP/Vista users retrieve the limit of conections, set an upload limit of 85% your maximun upload rate, etc...
Of course you cant use an Java program like Azureus in an old computer.. thats why utorrent exist xD

Personally, I use Limewire. Mainly because all I download is music, however, if I'm downloading full albums, programs or movies I tend to use BitTorrent, I find it a bit easier for the larger files.

I use frostwire to download individual songs and uTorrent for albums or movies. I switched over to frostwire when some p2p programs where gettin tracked

You can get utorrent from their website utorrent.com....you'll need a search engine to find stuff like piratebay.org, mininova.org....etc.....It will take forever to finish downloading a movie with a dial-up...imagine downloading one song on dial-up connection and multiplying it many many times. But, it is up to...you can try it out if you don't like it just uninstall it.

I personally us UTorrent for all my downloading. I refuse to use limewire, kazaa, etc due to the fact that you rarely get a reliable result and most of the time the files have virus and all. Torrents tend to be the best way to get good results plus you can use PeerGuardian to protect yourself.

A lot of companies are starting to move towards peer-to-peer too. For example, FunCom has just now used torrents to get their clients out to the players. It was kind of weird for me, as I have always looked at torrents as being for illegal purposes, but even other games are starting to use it now.

For that reason, I would vote that it shows torrents are the best way to share files from one person to another. If it's good enough for multi-million dollar companies to use, it's good enough for us!