Thanks for the Glow Worm tip, its not too expensive so I will have a look at it, to be honest it looks like a pretty decent bit of software anyway.

NukedBug is right on the definition f batch renderings, but there is also another aspect of batch rendering, and that is multipule renderings on a single machine, lets say you have 20 scenes in an animation set in a que, you set the render preferences and then a bit of python goes to work to render scene one, when its done it saves it, opens scene two, renders it and so on.  This is very useful as your machine can be working away while you sleep.

G