Ziz said:

What's the generally accepted torrent download ap, then? I looked for settings like that in the one I had (don't remember the name) but I couldn't find anything to control external access to my machine.

1)limewire is not a .torrent application, and it CAN possibly share files,
avoid it

2) azureus used to be good, but got taken over by a company that
may change its operations, also it uses JAVA, which is slow and kind
of bloated at times, your mileage might vary....it could use up a lot
of memory

3) utorrent is a small fast program that a lot of people use because
its easy to pick up and get working...

go to http://www.oldversion.com/ -> file sharing -> pick up utorrent
version 1.5 http://www.oldversion.com/download.phpidlong=6f0c79ff61b72a97236fd85e786cb525
or 1.6 if you feel adventurous....

that should get you started.
(by the way, these are all windows programs, although i think
they may have clients for other os'es)..

later
-1