I think you should be able to convert a topic into a private conversation. So if one person posts a topic that is personal you can easily convert into a private conversation Because it might be better to talk there
The Administration panel in vB makes me want to puke, reminds me of a really old site. Compare the IP.Board's adminstration panel in 2.3 and vbulletin 3.8, and ipb is a million times better
We were told a December release date, but i think that was obviously too little time, since its a complete rewrite. I dont think the wait is really worth that much, but ipb3 is really coming out to be going well.
They have said they were dropping PHP5 support many times. They said that one of the reasons they were switching to PHP5 was because no more support will be given to PHP4.
In the Setup Requirements