The strength of CSS layouts is flexibility. Yes, you need to fiddle a bit with it to make it all work, but the majority of the stuff is done in an external CSS file. Redesigning parts of a CSS site is much easier than with a table -- indeed it is almost impossible with a table in some cases because it is so static. With CSS you can change positioning and float it in another direction for example. A lot of repositioning can be done with absolute positioning, though floats are more ideal for the "core" structure.

I think the example provided in the article is good though. CSS layouts should be so trivial to do, and it's a shame they're not. Going back to tables doesn't come without a cost however.