FRV,
I think some of the confusion with Hypershot is that while it is always rendering a "preview" render, there is still an option to make an actual render as well. A lot of what people talk about when it comes to the speed of Hypershot is the speed of the preview render and not an actual render. When you talk about the time it took for your model to "render" I am sure you were using the render settings and not just waiting for a preview render to clean up. As a user of Hypershot for a while now I can tell you unless you are using a pretty big machine, be very careful as to how high you run the render settings. If you take them to high the render times will go through the roof. While I like Hypershot for doing some renders it is not the right tool in my opinion for all renders. Hypershot was originally developed for the automotive industry for doing studio renders of automobiles. While it does render amazing studio renders it is not the best tool for doing exterior renders of architecture for example. Like any piece of software it has its place and time to use it. I agree with people that it is amazing and the preview render is really quick it just needs to be made clear that the vast majority of what we see are "preview" renders and not actual renders.
Scott