Thanks for the reply Thomas.
I attached a screenshot - I have a theory that it has to do with the images. I removed some (as you can see 2 are remaining at this particular save) and it seems to help. But I have very little knowledge about the nuts and bolts, so perhaps it is something totally different. Removing the images and changing them to textures has made the model manageable at least. The missing line on the Model Info box reads Styles - 3.
Unfortunately I'm not able to upload the model to a public thread such as this one, I'm sure that would be the most helpful thing to do.
My machine has a NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700 - as far as Hardware Acceleration, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to that (I would love to know more, just haven't taken the time to learn). I attached a screen shot of that as well, but I suspect it may not be useful.
Not to be a complete suck-up, but also just wanted to mention how much help your countless answers to others queries have been over the years (and your plug ins of course). Thanks!