And are there any other programs apart from apt-spy I could try that will automatically find the fastest mirrors available? Any with a nice GUI?

Thanks.

I'm not sure if your particular Debian-derived distro has apt-setup. Apt-setup should be part of any a Debian base install but it may or may not be in your particular distro. If it exist, it should be located in /usr/sbin. Run "/usr/sbin/apt-setup" (WITHOUT the quotes), pick the mirror/repo/source that's geographically closest to you (there should be a few of them per geographic location). Apt-setup will prompt for amongst other things if you want "non-free" to be added (i.e. if you want to use "non-free" software) and then test out this mirror/repo/source and then write out a /etc/apt/sources.list. Try it if it exist.