>1. i have a dial-up connection and am not behind a 
>firewall, do i uncheck "use proxy for ftp transfers"? 

This option will only be taken in account when using a 
proxy (if no proxy is present, it will be ignored)

>2. since no external links are downloaded by default, 
>is the -ad.doubleclick.net/* filter necessary? 

Yes, because other default filters, such as +*.gif, 
would allow all ads images (and this is also a good 
basic filter example)

>3. the help file says a maximum mirroring depth of 3 
>means download the current page and pages up to two 
>levels below the current page. then does that mean a 
>level of 0 prevents the page from being downloaded? 
in 
>which situation would level 0 be useful for? 

0=will download the page but won't scan links inside
1=will download the page and will rewrite links inside

>4. i have a dial-up connection with average speed of 
>44kbps...what is the best number of connections for 
>me? download acceleration programs that i've tried 
had 
>this set to 4-5, so is this the optimum setting for 
my 
>connection? 

Well, 8 simultaneous connections is generally good 
(even if 4 is also good) - for very fast pipes, it is 
generally a good idea to reduce it to 2 or 3

>5. under flow control, how do i set the program to 
>retry indefinitely? 

You can't, even if setting retry=999 will work, BUT 
THIS IS NOT ADVISED (3 is generally a maximum - if the 
file still fails after 3 retries, this is generally 
due to a server problem such as cgi error, server 
error..)

>6. should i check "get HTML files first" for better 
>performance? if this option is indeed beneficial for 
>most users, then i think it should be checked by 
>default. 

Well, this option is still in testing, that's why it 
is not checked by default - but, yes, it should 
improve performances and allow to detect the total 
number of links faster, too

>7. are there any default MIME type associations, or 
do 
>i have to manually map everything, including html- 
>>text/html etc.? 

This option tab is only useful for php or asp pages, 
like:
php,asp -> text/html

This is not done by default, because in some cases php 
or asp pages may generate images..

>8. under primary scan rule (experts tab), what 
>does "store html files first" mean? 

Well, this option is related to question 6: it allows 
to scan and get html files first, before downloading 
images.