Well firstly you can turn off the management icons in the options if you don’t think you’ll need them. Also the next version which I am trying to ready to publish today or tomorrow does squeeze up the user info column a little.
It’s not a bad idea to try and offer a different view as an option to those with less real estate to play with so I’ll put it on the list.
Finally, you can, of course, always define a different page template (like I have here) for the forum which utilises more space although that can be dependent upon the theme you use.