Should Tables be avoided in HTML at any cost?

Question

It is advisable to use tables in HTML pages (now that we have CSS)?

What are the applications of tables? What features/abilities does tables have that are not in CSS?

Answer 1

Everyone so far has said how tables should only be used for tabular data, and this is true. Take a look at the HTML source of any page on SO and you'll see that they have a different idea...

I think their rationale is that sometimes using a table is just so much simpler. Though, there are a lot of really good usability reasons why to avoid them.