here is the image and what it's supposed to look like:
https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35760

only difference between then and now is I added the area lights with linear decay as suggested for the monitors. The final render (recently) looks quite nice with the exception of taking 14 hours....

And here I thought the modeling part of it was actually the best part, just needing fixing the lights and learn a bit more on rendering

In the outliner, am I correct to presume the items with the white icon and red arrow are the broken pieces? Is funny, when scene was created (in Maya 2011) I was working in the outliner a lot, and they were never there.....
could scene have gotten corrupted thru saving files to temp media and also because I've upgraded to Maya 2013?
I'd rather ask these here first, than start a support ticket with Autodesk, especially if all the issues I'm having is my fault to begin with......

Think it's time for me to do a couple more tutorials from here, then in future just recreate this desk scene from scratch when I have better knowledge.
been wanting to do the Victorian House, 'tis a good reason to start it this weekend

Thanks for all the time you've spent on this, is good to know it's my modeling, and not my system or wrong preferences being set.

J.B.