Just my opinion.
Do not use frames. I can think of no good reason to use them for website design and I can’t think of many popular and succesful websites that use them anymore.
I’m making an audio-oriented site using yahoo media player which catalogues any mp3s on the page and then plays them consecutively or as you select them - if you change pages then you start over - by using frames the catalogue loads and can be played/paused even while other pages are browsed - at least that’s what I’m working on and why frames made sense at the time. ;-)