Long render times depends on ones perception. If you have a look through my gallery keep in mind that almost all of my posted images for the last 6-8 months have not taken more than 3hrs to render per image.
It's definately possible to acheive DECENT quality renders  with some tweaking.

My PC is a p4 2.8Ghz with 1.5Gb ram..so..nothing flash.

It's a shame stupidity isn't painful.