Yeah, I go to another forum that uses IPS and its pretty solid. Has pretty much all the features I like about RCF right now.Invision, Invision, Invision, and one more time, INVISION. SMF is really a terrible software. TERRIBLE. Trust me when I say that if you change to SMF, you will change back within the hour.
If you don't do Invision, however, do phpBB.
http://www.invisionpower.com/
Is there any feature in any of these softwares where you can "tag" a poster so they get a notification that you mentioned them? It would obviously have to get disabled for someone like W&G/Max/Ben, but it seems like something that could be pretty useful in discussions..