I agree with the no avatar/signature pics ( I'm on a broadband connection too ). It just gets out of hand on most other forums.
The biggest improvement to the forums that I could think of would be a "Search all Forums" feature to the search function. A lot of times I have to run the search multiple times using the different forum topics in order to find something that could be posted on a number of different topics. It would speed things up and be easier for people to search before posting a question.
- Chris