How bad are Tables

[hargi]

Just asking as on a cd from a well known internet mag there was some templates for sites, and they used tables for there layout. The templates Visually looked good, but i thought tables for layouts were bad.
??

 

[hargi]

Thats what i thought, i mean in the old days i used to design with tables, and liek you say its easy.
But this CD with the Mag the templates were made by a big firm. Just annoying that if they *companies* are still using tables for design makes me wonder why i should do it properly with all the effort thats involved