I POSTED about this on the CSS forum. I find it kind of creepy that you're reposting my blog entries over here instead of on the existing thread, but okay.
I consider my time to be valuable too, but I also consider learning new approaches and new design techniques a valuable exercise.
I am all for tables for tabular data. But a layout is NOT tabular data, and when I want my content to be structured properly in my HTML files, divs are the way to go here. The faux column approach works perfectly for this, and the HTML markup (which is the part that matters for SEO) is cleaner than using a table.
My CSS does not contain any IE-specific code or hacks.
Again, the fact that you posted this here, addressing it to me, just creeps me out...