There are always going to be tradeoffs chosing one discussion system over another. Most of the forums here changed over a year ago, mainly forced by lots of spamming on the forums, abusive messages etc. It was always just a small handful of course responsible, but it meant the introduction of the registration process (which incidentally stopped the problem)

But the thing I liked least about the old system was the fact that you couldn't search and that the page just grew and grew and grew. And without killing a whole lot of messages (which I don't like to do) there was no way to have a manageable archive.

This BBS system is constantly being updated as well so there are always new features coming being added. It's not perfect but it is about the best one I know about. Sorry to those who preferred the old system, I know it's a bummer when a format you are comfortable with changes. It was just an administrative headache for me to keep maintaining it the old way.