We have made a number of changes to the server in an effort to speed up the site. Browse around and let us know if you feel like things are moving at a snappier pace.
the new posts button shows "The threads below have not been updated since your last visit but still contain unread posts." i'm not sure if i like that or not, it does make the search results a lot longer.
I actually like that feature.
many times I can't always read all of the "new" posts due to distractions, it's nice to be able to go back and see a few other threads i could miss.
One thing that used to bug me was after hitting the "new posts" link a few times (over the course of a few hours) older topics that I still hadn't read would not show up.