http://www.sda-asia.com/sda/news/psecom,id,5483,nodeid,4,_language,Singapore.html
Sygate will be no longer releasing updates, but of coures you can use the old versions still.
If you use bittorrent correctly you will see nice results, I included a shot of how fast I'm downloading right now, would be a lot faster If my brother wasn't on xbox live right now.
If you have a decent computer I'd recommend azureus, its a bit of a resource hog but it well worth it if you use all the options it has. If not then abc should work just fine.
Bitlord and bitcomet are known to report ratios incorrectly (ul:dl) so some people don't upload to bitcom/lord users which could explain your slow speeds.
Then its possible you were downloading from a poorly seeded torrent, maybe a bad tracker, or you limited your upload to nothing and people were choking you.
What is your definition of safe, not getting caught by the riaa, not getting viruses? If its not getting caught as long as you don't upload you will be pretty safe with both limewire and bearshare. As far as viruses if you have a decent antiviruse it should catch any if you happen to download something infected.