I think the general consensus is that using permalinks is better and also a lot better for readablity. Could be wrong though.
Yah permalinks are much better for SEO… Google shows your page more often if the searchers’ keywords are in the URL itself.
Somewhere I read that Matt Cutts said that keyword rich URL’s are better (sorry cannot find that site)
but there is more than the URL, try this SEO plugin:
http://www.finalwebsites.com/bbpress/bbpress-seo-tools.php
URLs with keywords and straight ones are the SEO compatible. You should rewrite URL instead of using ?id=1
http://www.seoborg.com
