Hey, OperaGuy... I tried your "Bucket Size" idea on my system. I have a Athelon 3000+ wtih 1 gig of ram. The render I was doing was taking a good 15 - 20 min under the default settings as DRAFT and turning on Shadows (using Firefly)). I changed the Bucket size to 320 and the render was done in about 5 min! The render size is 640x480. So, I am still using "Draft" settings adding in the shadows so I get about 20 frames per hour. It will still take several days to finish this (I have 4800 frames). At least this way it will actually finish! One thing, if I turn on the Textures, my system chokes completely! You see the Kernal usage around 30-40% and of course, the CPU is pinned.