OK, here's something interesting. The lighting that I was using actually ADDED to the render time. I reset my interface to start up with the default setup, and then imported the figures from the previous test into the scene. I've attached a screen shot of my interface, showing the lighting arrangement at the time of render, and the render settings I used.

When rendering directly from the document window sized at 1024 x 902, the render was 50 seconds (time 06:47:40 to 06:48:30).

When rendering to a NEW 1024 x 902 window (as shown in the Render Options dialog in the shot here), the render was 53 seconds (time 06:50:10 to 06:51:03).

So right now, the main difference seems to be Windows Me vs Windows XP, which I find very interesting! I'm assuming we all have AGP graphics adapters? (Which would make a difference too, if you are using a PCI graphics card).