Every suggestion is welcome, so keep them coming !

About the frames : a 'single frame' in an animation is definitively not the same thing that a high resolution still image. For example, the scene you submitted is, from a renderfarm point of view, extremely difficult, because it uses global radiosity, 3600 x 2400 resolution, and with lighting quality boost +2 (quite a nightmare :). Often it is possible to achieve the same quality without using radiosity (using global illumination or ambient occlusion), and with much faster render times.

As explained in the RUG (Renderfarm User Guide), radiosity is in fact a worst case scenario for any renderfarm because :

• radiosity is inherently slower than everything else :)
• the preparation phase is very long, and it has to be computed for each tile (and the QB+2.0 makes it worse)
• I have devised an automated  tile allocation scheme which is very efficient for high res stills, but it can't be used with radiosity because of this long preparation phase (so the default Vue allocation method is used instead).

So, it is important to use radiosity with caution. Sometimes it is needed to achieve a particular look, but in that case it is important to be aware of the various implications.