Quote - Did you know that when you render to disk you can press the windows key on your keyboard and get the desktop or other programs while the render is running? Press the tab button then enter to select other running programs off the start bar.

Yes, I had noticed this.  You can also use Alt + Tab to select the programs directly, without pressing the Windows key.  Unfortunately, I still needed the ability to pause a render that would take a week or more.  I do quite a few CPU intensive things on my primary station: rendering, games, image manipulation, compiling, etc. so I need to tell Bryce to back off from time to time.

Here's the solution I currently have running:
I'm using the tutorial posted above to split the image up into multiple segments.  In my case, these are the left half of the image, the right half of the image, and a thin strip down the middle.  The third component is necessary because of a one-pixel wide flaw running from the top to the bottom of the right-hand side of every image Bryce renders on my machine.  This flaw isn't noticable in a single image...  But stands out pretty badly when you stitch two images together.

My render "farm" is currently composed of two computers:

1. My primary machine, used for just about everything.  Rendering, games, programming, etc.
2. A secondary machine, used primarily for surfing the Internet.

I'm using the primary machine as the host, with the secondary machine used as a client.  When I need the CPU of the primary machine free, I can pause the render quickly while allowing the secondary machine to continue its operation, then resume the render at the host when I no longer need the CPU.

And as a note on the whole "quirky interface" topic, here's one that through me for a loop for quite a while.  In Bryce 5, clicking anywhere within the host's window causes the host to immediately stop rendering, and load a blank document.  "Anywhere" includes the Bryce window's title bar!

To cause the host to begin rendering again, you must find the settings for the render job, and reselect "render at host."  This will cause the host to reload the scene, and resume rendering.