Material not displaying as expected I'm trying to make progress on a work project that needs completing as soon as possible. I'm new to blender (one week of solid tinkering/learning) and I need some help.

I've got a couple simple materials that are giving me trouble. See attached images for an example and material setup.

How do I get the rendered version of "white" to look more like it does in the 3D View: white with highlights, not the blown out white in the render?
The problem is because you are trying to use Cycles shaders with the Blender Internal render engine.

Each render engine has its own way of handling materials, and these ways are usually incompatible with one another. Because of this, designing a material in one render engine, and then trying to render it with a different render engine won't work.

You need to make materials in the same render engine that you are going to use.

Switch into Blender Render and create a new material there, and your problem should go away.