Redirecting old URLs

Hi! I have a few questions. I'd be glad if you could answer.

1) I have a vBulletin board with a SEO hack which makes my URLs like:
/thread123.html - /forum123.html

I'm thinking of buying vBSEO, but I'm not sure whether it is fully possible to redirect the /thread123.html style URLs into /thread-name.html style URLs.

2) Is there any possibility of losing Google rankings or Pagerank after I redirect my old URLs into new ones?

3) Do I have to link to vbseo.com in my footer? Can I just protect the whole copyright notice without linking to your site?

Thanks for your patience for reading and for your possible answers.

1) You can do this with some custom .htaccess directives. Not a problem.

2) Yes, it's possible. Even though they will be 301 redirected, there are no guarantees that pagerank will be maintained.

3) Yes, there are 5 variations of the copyright message that are not linked. You can choose any one of them.

Thanks for your fast reply.

Then,

Is it possible to rewrite the vBSEOed URLs like /thread123.html, without any trouble and hacks?

Yes, you should be able to use that format. Try the vBSEO on-line demo here: http://www.vbseo.com/demo/

You can customize the URLs to your liking.

Is there a significant difference between /thread123.html style URLs and /forum-name/thread-name.html style URLs?

If yes, to what extent?