help a bittorrent newbie!

hey there, i just got a latop and am very new to this whole bittorrent thing. :cry:

i am on a apple mac, running OSX 10.4

I thought I had figured this whole bittoreent thing out, but it seems i havnt!
here is my problem, was wondering if anyonecan help! ::

okay so I go to a bittorrent search engine, search for something, ie a movie, download the bittorrent and then put it into the bittorrent program, where it apparently is supposed to start downloading (is that correct?!), but they do not start, and if they do, it is very very slow.

i tried to download a very popular movie the other day, but after 24 hours,it had only downloaded 16 mb!! crazy talk! my internet connection (wireless) is very fast, and when i download something normally (ie not through bittorrent) it is super quick.

it is only when i am downloading through bittorrent that it doesnt seem to be working.

any ideas/suggestions?

would be greatly appreciated!!

cheers

brendan