Dave's reasoning for buying the tech support is a sound one. He is doing it for his customers, and that is a lot cheaper than putting your own time into it (and maybe not knowing the answer). $200 is dirt cheap ... and a good point.
I would have to disagree that one forum software is any better than the other. They have their own unique qualities.
What counts is what you put into it in the form of modifications. Boards out of the box are notorious for being bloated in code and not too spider freindly. I think phpBB is one of the faster loading boards out of the box though -- because it does not have all of the bells and whistles.
This has an upside, it is easier to spider -- for all those bells and whistles dilute the content of the board. That content is the meat of the search index and it is clouded in birthday calendars, fancy drop down menus on every post, and a ton of other non-essential garbage.
The WDC forum has been open since January. I know, I was at Matauris New Year Chat Bash which a lot of us watched the clock turn midnight more than once -- followed it from the east to the west til we were all snockered. I was signed up then.
But the IPB board does not spider well. This phpBB board has been modded and has 2100 pages in Google and receives about 50 hits from them a day
http://www.bandofgonzos.com/phpbb/ all from mid-March.
It has been stripped down, much like WPW is. No frills here. What goes on behind the scenes though is another matter. There is bot tracking, search term hit tracking and all the stats and admin utilities have been plugged into it. All readily available from the phpBB community.