Use a grunt computer.
The rendering of my dissertation results took ages too.

You must have an uber geeky friend with a specced out PC
( Master Of Turnips. Only gays and morons believe in ghosts., Tue 26 May 2009, 11:50, archived)

My uni has special uber pcs for people doing rendering.
You pay a couple of quid, start it off rendering and you have use of it all day.
( Anthropos Was making beer on, Tue 26 May 2009, 11:52, archived)

That would have been useful :(
I have 2gb of ram here and a 2.6GHz processor. I had to do about 5 million results
( Master Of Turnips. Only gays and morons believe in ghosts., Tue 26 May 2009, 11:56, archived)

It seems a bit harsh to expect you to do SCIENCE on your home PC.

( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 26 May 2009, 11:57, archived)

Ouch!
I borrowed one to run my stats testing for my dissertation. I was taking forever on this pc and crashed any time I did anything other than leave it alone to get on with it!
( Anthropos Was making beer on, Tue 26 May 2009, 11:58, archived)