I worked with a professional designer to come up with a good balance of content and white space. I knew that the design would not please everyone, but that's impossible. Also note that your smaller screen size and increased font size are driving the content down even further. A monitor capable of 1024x768 is not "large," it's baseline in today's market.
I disagree with your assessment that it only offers features that others do already. The post bookmark feature is very helpful (much better than random search, and you don't need to litter your browser's bookmark menu with links to individual posts), and I haven't seen that elsewhere. I also don't know of any forum software that lets you save posts as drafts to edit and post later. I could be wrong, of course.
I made the software flexible enough to allow for different skins merely by placing a custom CSS file in the style directory. I've considered allowing users to upload their own stylesheets, letting them create their own skin. Wouldn't be hard to add to the preferences panel.
This is a beta product, and yes, it has quirks. Please keep in mind that this software is constantly under development, and there are fixes in testing for many things (an advanced post editor, more advanced search options, layout tweaks like your avatar issue, and more). While there are many forum packages out there, only a few reach this level of sophistication, and while there is a PHP-based forum wherever you look (vBulletin being the dominant player), in the ColdFusion application market, there are very few choices for advanced forums. This software will help fill that niche.
One last thing to remember: I'm one developer. Software of this size and complexity usually has a team behind it, but I'm not in a position to hire someone to help out right now. That may change once it hits the market as an official retail product.
Please keep the comments coming though. I do appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative.