Internet Explorer Memory Leak?

I had posted recently about being unable to upload large images with the Java Uploader. This is something that so far about 25 members of our site have complained to us about. At the time, I thought it was large photos that was causing the problem -- it turns out to be solely a problem of large images being uploaded in Internet Explorer. The exact same photos will upload just fine in Firefox or other browsers. In IE, you select the photos, click Upload, and the upload pop-up appears -- and then nothing happens.

I have been able to duplicate this on two computers of my own, using both IE 6.0, and IE 7.0 (beta). When doing so, I am using 5 photos, all larger than 1500kb. When doing this, the memory usage of IE spikes above 150,000kb, and often the browser just freezes. Sometimes IE will just freeze with very small images (i.e. less than 20kb).

Is this a problem with IE? With the Java uploader? Currently my site is using Java Uploader, version 2.0.49 (which you guys sent to me). As it is now, the Java Uploader is virtually unusable by Internet Explorer users, especially those with lower end computers who are wanting to upload large images.

Using the ActiveX version is not a possibility for us -- we do not want to have two separate versions of the uploader; our users are very stupid, and already have a hard enough time installing Java. Explaining ActiveX controls is impossible with them.