I felt like that when learning XHTML+CSS in the HTML 4 days (when the most common question seemed to be 'Best layout method: iframes or tables?!'), and with IE 5.5 still being used a bit it was a big annoyance to switch over to XHTML and CSS.
But honestly, I now couldn't go back. I seldom run into any cross browser issues (apart from the odd IE 6 and 7 issue, which conditional comments takes care of in a minute or two), and I now couldn't imagine using tables for a layout.
But you're right that using HTML tables isn't evil. They're designed to display tabulated data and using them for this purpose is definitely a good plan ;-)
But honestly, I now couldn't go back. I seldom run into any cross browser issues (apart from the odd IE 6 and 7 issue, which conditional comments takes care of in a minute or two), and I now couldn't imagine using tables for a layout.
But you're right that using HTML tables isn't evil. They're designed to display tabulated data and using them for this purpose is definitely a good plan ;-)