By introducing tables into your HTML, you make the maintainability of your code and future use a little less valuable. Browsers are constantly pushing towards an all CSS world and tables are GUARANTEED to always work for tabular data. It's just a COINCIDENCE that tables are easy to use now for formatting. The easiest way to look at it is like this:
Tables --> Tabular data and reporting
CSS --> Design and formatting (use DIVs)
HTML --> Structure and data/text
While the tables may be easier now, think about how much maintenance it will create down the road, when browsers change their behavior with rendering tables.
Also think about mobile browsers, they tend to render tables differently. A table layout may look awesome on a PC and completely fall apart on a mobile browser.
That being said, at the end of the day you have to use CSS to design the tables, so why not start with CSS and Divs.