they dont really offer much and their prices are very high.

I'm looking for a scalable system....

Also wondering if DNN has SEO urls or urls like I'm seeing in these fourms?

Drupal seems easier to work with, has tons more free modules, seems easier to customize, is cheaper to run and implement..

Am I just a REALLY big MS fanboy if I insist on doing this project with MS products or is there a better arguement than that?

I like php/open etc for mini projects, for fan based sites, etc...but not for business purposes or were there is high visibility to those that are considered my superiors.

I probably have no biz working with DDN as I have no knowledge of ASP, C#, .net anything... but I really want to branch this direction than what I am used to which is php/mysql...etc etc 

Just no money in php/mysql.  We have a ton of ms sql people working were I'm at, lotsa java people too....which they are always looking for, but they have given up on c# programmers from what I can tell as they are impossible to find with what they want to pay.

I have written my thoughts back in 2007 on the Joomla vs DotNetNuke discussion - it probably needs updating but I it will give you some initial ideas.

I know you are are talking about forums and friendly URLS - and while I can't give you specific instructions on that - I can tell you that while friendly urls are important, they are not the be all end all and good quality content, good posts and threads will see you get listed with google.  If you use dotnetnuke as an example here - the urls are not that overly friendly but they still get well ranked, and while the belief may be because 'dnn is so big' - it comes down to relevant content - and Google will reward intelligent content with plenty of visits if the rest of the site is setup correctly for indexing.

I have not used the dnn forums commercially - some people do, but most will invest in forums such as Active Modules - who do have both free and premium forums for users and the enterprise level ,although not overly cheap really is quite a good product.

http://blogs.xd.com.au/2007/06/02/JoomlaOrDotNetNuke.aspx 

I have been running Yet Another Forum (YAF) on module reviews - not much on there - but I was primarily testing the forums to see how they go.

This is YAF website. It does require more work to get going - but have found it to be as reliable as others and it's quite mature - I have not tried it on DNN 5.

Hope this gives you some more help in the decision making process.

Nina Meiers