Two suggestions.

Show last poster's name/Show only forums I care about.

[HughMungus]

A couple of things that might cut down on bandwidth use and processor use.

I'm sure the concept of showing who the most-recent poster in a thread in a list of threads is not a new idea but it seems like it would cut back on a lot of bandwidth useage as people wouldn't be checking threads they're interested in and have posted to to see if anyone replied.

A new idea (to me) is for the "recent posts" option. Allow users to select which forums they want to monitor for "recent posts" instead of all of them.

[whoisgregg]

I tend to use the Your active threads [webmasterworld.com] page to keep track. It sorts the list by the Last Post time, so you can just watch the top 3 or 4 threads to see any new activity.