In fact transactions fee have nothing to do with priority or not. So you can use the patch to remove fees from the current bitcoin client.

First confirmation after 8 hours, I never saw that...  When you wait did you checked that site: http://www.bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/
will show you transactions (that he is aware of) unconfirmed and need to be processed. Also check at the bottom of your bitcoin client and make sure it's displaying X number of block equal to what are there: http://www.bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/

Hope this help

Thank you !

Yes, I checked the block count in my client and on bitcoin watch. It was equal.

Well, thanks for the info about transaction fees. I thought payments send with transaction fee are higher in priority...

Check blockexplorer.com and paste the sent address to see if it has been distributed by the network yet.

If not re-run your client with the following flag:    bitcoin -rescan

and wait until at least 1 confirmation is showing before disconnecting your client from the network.

after i pressed "send" a new window opened asking for a transaction fee of 0.0005 BTC.
I clicked YES and then a new window opened "Paymente sent"

just like always (ok sometimes the fee window doesn't open and the "payment sent" window opens directly).

So, this really creeps me out, because it has never taken so long (except yesterday with the micropayment).

Funny thing is, that the receiving client already shows it - only without confirmations...

It would be really frustrating to loose 5 BTC that way!!!

Check your number of connections.

It's possible, I suppose, that you are connected to an "outpost" of the network, that isn't connected to the entire network.  For instance, if you have 0 connections, obviously your transaction is not going to reach the miners.  If you have 1 connection, and the person you are connected to only has 1 connection (i.e. back to you), then the transaction isn't going to make it to the miners.  If you have n connections to people who only have 1 connection (i.e. you), then it's not going anywhere.  And if you have n connections that are all interconnected but have no external connections to the network, then it's not going to make it to the miners.

I'm using the latest client for Mac OSX v0.3.23

and I usually have 8 connections within a few minutes after starting the client.
(I also had 8 connections today and yesterday the whole time)

As far as I know there are no means to get info about how many connections in- and outbound I have via the 8 connections that are shown.

I tried the upnp box twice but I only had 8 connections as per usual.

Furthermore I don't really know what the upnp means and if it decreases my client's/wallet's security...