Looks like you missed most of the discussion: semantics, or machine-readable information, and accessibility matter enourmously on the web. At the end of that line of thought is just presenting a bitmap image, why bother with HTML at all? :)
The original problem with tables was using them together with spacers to create layout, not much other uses.
There's no inherent problem with tables, it is perfect for tabular layout. Data grids are tabular, most forms are tabular.