Wow, I came over here to post that I had just noticed it and I was really appreciative. I often don't have the time to go through all the new posts, and it used to time out and assume I had read everything (at least that was my interpretation of the forum behavior). I was happy to see that it remembered which were new new and which were still new to me.

I'm glad I looked at the nonbold (meaning had been seen by me as new, but not read and I believe automatically marked as read, even though I hadn't) threads to see this one and then find it is exactly what I was going to redundantly post a new thread on!

Since, I've obviously come in with a "this is great" point of view, I am trying to see the "this is *not* so great" point of view. Am I right in recap'ing as:
The new posts tells me I have 14 pages worth when really it is 1 page worth and the rest are not of interest to me, why tell me 14 pages when I had the chance already to see them and I don't want to?

Assuming that is correct, I think a personal option to show them or not is a great idea.

There have been a bunch of times that I have come in and there are 20 pages of new posts, I start reading and get distracted by posts I find interesting to return to the new posts thread and find they have all gone when I try to go to the next page of new posts (I assume marked as read, since I had the chance).

Hitting new posts at that point gave me only new posts over the last hour or so that I was distracted.

I didn't see anything in the vBulletin documentation about this http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/
but I am no vBulletin guru (although I am a big fan).

I did find:
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Thread/Forum Read Marking Type
This option controls how threads and forums are marked as read. The options are:

1) Inactivity/Cookie Based - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (the value of the cookie timeout option) all threads and forums are considered read. Individual threads are marked as read within a session via cookies. This option is how all versions of vBulletin before 3.5 functioned.
2) Database (no automatic forum marking) - this option uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. However, in order for a forum to be marked read when all threads are read, the user must view the list of threads for that forum. This option is more space and processor intensive than inactivity-based marking.
3) Database (automatic forum marking) - this option is the same as a previous option, but forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread is read. This is the most usable option for end users, but most processor intensive.
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It looks like Reggie has made the most computing intensive option available (which is pretty generous).

I'd like to see everyone happy, so I'd love to be proven wrong, but if we have to choose one over the other, I would very much prefer the current setting where I can recapture threads I didn't see, even though they were on my unread list at one point.