>Threaded view is only viable for short threads - I think people will have problems if they leave that as their default. If you bring up a thread with hundreds or even thousands of posts, you have to wait quite a while for it to display the lot - then you have to scroll...
Well, KathH's
"OK the big one" thread is only 3 pages long (easily viewable in thread view imho) and it gets 10 replies deep (wow, I didn't realize they had gotten that deep that fast!).
Just to note also that I wrote a long response in Bob's thread about why I don't think 550 is a readable width
in a forum environment (or 300 wide by the time you get to the 10th reply or so).