For those of you interested in the issues w/ the forums being properly marked as "read", here's a thread on vBulletin.com about it:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104491
Basically it's a known issue they're planning on changing for the next release. I haven't finished reading the thread myself, but I'm hoping someone's got an interrum fix, which I'll grab if available.