Hi Wash,

I will answer  the  last question i.e "How can I speed up a torrent

download? I mean, can I trick the app/system into downloading faster?"

1. Use a download manager with a torrent extension/plugin: Check out
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm . You can get the
plugin here: http://files.freedownloadmanager.org/lite/fdminst-lite-bt.exe

2. Or use a dedicated bit torrent client . I prefer
http://www.utorrent.com/downloads . I hear  vuze is also good but i
have not tried it: http://www.vuze.com/

3. Go to a torrent site like www.mininova.org or search across
multiple torrent sites using www.torrentz.com

4. Grab the file which has a high seed to leechers ratio. Seeds refer
to the hosts(machines) which have the file you want and allow
download, while leechers are people/hosts who are currently
downloading that file.  its important to look at file comments, from
people who have downloaded the file, otherwise, you might just
download a file that is corrupted

5. Once the download completes, you can stop all the seeds from
uploading or if you have enough bandwidth, you can become a seed
yourself

Hope this helps