I completed my PADI Open Water certification in July. The class materials included information on tables, but no instruction in their use. It appeared clear to me that PADI, even though they didn't come right out and say it, is recommending the use of a dive computer.
If left to my OW training I'd have only a knowledge that tables exist, and next to nothing of their use. I did some self study on the use of tables to learn the math behind the tech, but I'll continue to record all of my dives based on my computer.
With PADI, you can take the class with tables or with computers, and you can do both. If you took the computer version of the course, you should have been given a special booklet teaching computers, and you should have been given access to a pretty good online computer simulator to work with. In that case, you should nto have received either tables or the eRDPml with the course. If you received the tables or eRDPml and did not get the computer stuff and were not given table instruction, then you got the materials for one course and were taught the other course without the proper materials.
PADI has definitely accepted the reality that people are not using the tables much at all and are instead going with computers. No need to guess--they are quite open in saying so. I was trained using tables by PADI during the last millenium. My first dive experience after certification was mutli-level diving in Cozumel. I whipped out my tables to the great amusement of the rest of the divers on the boat, who explained to me how useless they were for that kind of diving. That is the last time I ever saw anyone try to use tables outside of a class.
---------- Post added August 18th, 2014 at 10:15 AM ----------
I have a basic question: My computer is a Suunto Cobra. At the end of my dives I still like to go through the SSI dive tables to log my dives to keep fresh on the use of the tables as well. When doing repetitive dives, especially when doing three or more I am frequently "running out" of bottom time according to the tables when I use them conservatively as you're supposed to while my computer still says I have bottom time left.
I know that the original SSI tables were based on the U.S. Navy tables. Although that makes them more aggressive for a first dive, it makes them much more conservative for subsequent dives because they call for much longer surface intervals than other tables. (Navy divers usually did one dive per day, so it was not a big deal.) If the SSI tables are still made that way, then that is part of your problem.
On the other hand, there is no known computer more conservative than the one you have in terms of repetitive dives, either. If you used a different computer, you would see an even more pronounced difference between the computer and the tables.
As others have said, if you are using the computer, don't even think about the pressure groups. They are not really relevant to what you are doing. Oh, I am sure someone is going to come along and say that if your computer miraculously quits on you between dives, if you have charted your table data you can still do the next dive. That is true, but since that is a pretty darn rare event, most people will take that risk.
