Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm pretty sure I have an old Dell laptop laying around somewhere, so I'll have to give that first recommendation a shot this weekend!
In my opinion the more hurdles you present the more users you drive away.
There are legitimate reasons for introducing hurdles like requiring registration, requiring activation e-mails, etc. Ask yourself whether the benefits of activating outweigh the potential downsides. If you're requiring activation e-mails to prevent bots from signing up, how significant of an impact will those bots have on other users? On a forum it may be pretty significant, as the site ca