I think you and gster are both on the right line regarding texture issues. I got a straightforward render off last night. Then just now I wanted to finish the last few books off on the middle shelf. Created four new lamberts, one texture for each and put them on the books. Fatal error: out of memory. Unfortunately this means I might have to retxture everything I've textured with non-procedurals, which isn't actually that much, just a pain isn't it. Unless I can convert my textures as gster suggests. From the googling I did, and even in the help files actually, the info all seems to point to converting file textures when using maya software, but I'm sure if I look a little harder the info will be about somewhere. I wonder if converting the textures would bypass the resolution issue, or whether it'd still be best to scale them down before converting?

I would tone down the render settings but I think it would be at the cost of the glass and the fur. Im sure some people would know a workaround with render layers, but that's beyond me at the moment.