Try both! You can easily convert a doc from Tables to Tabs and vice versa.
In pre-Ribbon versions of Word, go to Table->Convert and then choose either Text to Table or Table to Text depending on which way you want to go.
In Ribbon versions (2007, 2010 and beyond) they separated the commands:
To go from Text to Table, select your text, go to the Insert tab, click Table, and then Convert Text to Table.
To go the other way, select the rows of the table you want to convert, go to Table Tools->Layout Tab->Data group->Convert to Text
Historically, using tabs to align columns dates back to typewriter days - it's very old school. The single-stroke tab key replaced the old routine of hitting the spacebar repeatedly to align characters. Word gussied up tabs to include stuff like dot leaders and line leaders, center alignment and decimal-alignment.
Table functions in word processing were created for making spreadsheet data like financial tables look professional in business reports. Their utility was expanded by MS over time based on usage outside of the business sector. People used them for layout but IMHO it's really overkill, and not really the purpose for which they were intended.
Choice of usage of the two in Word is a matter of taste. Usage in web layout, though, is very firmly in favor of the Tab style of layout, which translates more readily to straight CSS. The use of tables for anything other than true tabular data is now frowned-upon in designing websites.
And while I'm on the subject as someone's bound to bring it up eventually, columns were meant for folks who wanted to do columnar printing, newspaper style.
Personally I find tabs to be far faster to set up and get going. I just tested in my version of Word, moving as efficiently as I possibly could. To get the same layout that I use in the video working in Tables it took me about 13 clicks, vs 5 clicks with Tabs. Excel's formatting capabilities do not fill me with joy - Word is just so much more robust when it comes to dealing with prepping for print. If I have to do math, I will use Excel whole heartedly. In fact, the initial algorithm for the Internship Survey was done entirely in Excel, as writing the functions in Excel was great prep work for having to translate them into PHP. However, if I need quick & elegant formatting I will go with Word & tabs any day.