Sometimes V4 will ignore the ESC key alltogether unless you hit it a couple of times in a row, this mainly in larger renders. Noticed too that some objects (complicated) that used to handle fine in V3 really slow down V4 to the point where dragging a pointlight an 1" across a view may take 5-6 secs or changing a setting will as long as that per point. Things like that could also be a cause for strange behaviour in the ESC dept. The render itself will happen at as good a speed as you could expect on a 1Ghz 512Mb PC. Apart from that Mike, there's always KA (Keyboards Anonymus) to help you to get rid of those nasty computer related habits.