Thats true dusty. I'm not use to such long rendering times. When I was trying Edius 5 the rendering times where much quicker, almost real time if there wasn't much FX which I try and steer clear of. I'm trying to be more organic and get the look I want from the camera rather than "fixing it in post" unless it really needs it.
I had the computer crash problem today when I was trying the render an mpg2 file. I tried three times and it was ok after that. I just put it down to the processor being tiered. I do work it rather hard.