I use another forum that also uses vBulletin. They have a feature turned on where if you hover the mouse over the thread title or even anywhere in the wide rectangle that has the thread title, you'll see a preview of the first post in the thread with perhaps up to 7 or 8 lines of text.

I don't help out that much answering questions but for those members that do they might appreciate that feature. There are a lot of threads to look at and if you could quickly preview the thread it might be helpful.