Thanks.  I know nothing about the video card, and wouldn't know it if I found it laying on my desk, sadly.  I'm using a stock, off the shelf, eMachine with Windows7, 4gb RAM, plenty of space on the hard drive.

I did go and change the render type and it doesn't crash as long as the scene is simple.  Rather defeats the purpose at that point.

Ah, well...guess I'll wait for the next version and see if it fixes anything.

Again, my thanks.