I cannot for the life of me figure out how to configure my laptop's firewall to use bit torrent at a decent speed. I have a wireless connection and I also use Norton Firewall. I'm not sure what to do.

first thing you want to do is set norton firewall to allow your bit torrent client to pass through it. also if you have windows xp sp2 you will also need to set it to allow bt to pass through it. im guessing you are conecting to the internet through your wireless card at home. if you are at a school, or coffee shop ect...where you are connecting to the internet through there network, you wont be able to "forward ports" on there network. if you are still having the yellow light come up after you configured your firewalls, that probably means you are connecting to the internet through a router. you will have to set up your router to 'forward ports' this allows bit torrent to pass through the firewall on the router. depending what kind of router you have, there will be different steps to forward ports.....more information on setting up your router can be found here:

Router Config