AJAX Tabbed Forumhome bad for SEO?

Your opionions/thoughts please:

My forum is currently using the AJAX Tabbed Forumhome page which I really like becasue I have a lot of sections and sub-forums and it looks better on separate tabs instead of all one page! It's also easier for the users.

Now check out my forum using a text browser here and take a look at what the page looks like to a spider. Notice that my 5 sections (or tabs) are showing up as links, and there is no actual content on the page other than the welcome header (which will be turned into an image soon). Note: For that text browser link to work you will probably have to copy the URL and paste it into another window. If their website sees you linking from another site they block it.

Code:

http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamersthrone.com%2Fforum

So technically, because of the AJAX tabs, the spiders need to follow an extra link for each of those 5 sections just to get to the real content.

I know by switching to DOMTab's, all content would show up on the forumhome page to the spider, which would eliminate the need for them to follow an 'extra link' to get to the content, and to the user it would still be on separate tabs!

In all honestly I already have the AJAX tabs setup nicely and it would kind of be a hassle to remove them and install the DOMTab's, so before I actually do any work, I want to ask you:

What is you honest opinion on how badly you think AJAX Tabs affect SEO?

Does having that 'extra link' for each of the 5 sections really hurt me?

Maybe having those 5 links is a good thing? Maybe someday they would be turned into Google Sitelinks?

Opinions please!!

Funny you sould post this because I've been looking today for a way to tab forumhome (without using ajax).

I personally think that ajax isn't good for SEO. Some kind of javascript/css tab system would be much better.

If the content has to be loaded from elsewhere, then the search engines are not going to find it on the page.

So the model that has the content on the page, inside DIVs, but hidden until selected, would be a better way to go.

Thank you for your replies! Anymore thoughts on this topic from anyone else?