i use winxp, and run c5p about 16 hours a day, as well as poser6, bryce, mimic, photoshop, psp10, and vue randomly throughout the day, i must be special since i rarely have a problem, infact poser6 is only one i had a problem with, with its 1gb memory limit -_-

and render nodes, are software on "secondary computers" to help carrara render a scene faster, carrara goes on the main machine, then render nodes on the rest, and it uses all computers it can connect to, to speed up renders, network rendering rocks :)