Use vBulletin and Invision. Staff on sites using a wide range of other board software (and heck some of those are pure <insert profanity filtered word here>)

As the thread starter states that CSS system can be painful. Apparently okay once you get the hang of it, but l don't do graphics so haven't got the fill info on it. vBulletin is easier though.

Most of the competing software has their own advantages and disadvantage in comparison to each other.

Yeap 2 vBulletin licences, and a private invision board for a specific technology (IBM database orientated) so l guess that says something