i am pretty sure most seo geekazoids will tell you the higher human readable text to code text ratio is better for search engine optimization. with css you reduce the code text quite a bit, even more if you stuff stuff (huh?) in an external css file. here is sitepoint spam article for css book that surprise, is chocky full of tables made in css
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/uto...ing-tables-css they have a free download lesson that i got that i read when i can't sleep...