Patstas, I LOVE the tabbed browing feature of IE7 (& other aspects of IE7), but you can still use tabbed browsing by using IE6 with the Yahoo Toolbar downloaded & enabling the tabbed browsing feature (click on the pencil icon on the Yahoo toolbar & check the "enable tabbed browsing" box).
Tabbed browsing using IE7 is indeed nicer, but by uninstalling IE7 & reverting to using tabbed browsing using IE6 with the Yahoo tooolbar did resolve the Paltalk issues I was having with IE7...no more boot-offs like with IE7.
This was never a problem before with Paltalk & IE7...maybe Paltalk will update their software because I do like IE7 better.
I have also heard that using Firefox as a stand-alone browser also resolves the problem & is stable (http://www.mozilla.com for the free download of Firefox). I haven't tried it but will do so this weekend.