I use an HTML editor called Kompozer to edit a table that I paste into my blog. I copy its "preview" and paste it into the WordPress visual editor. It's been working great for a year. Now all of the sudden, when I paste the table, the color of the cell background and text goes away.
I pasted the same preview into Microsoft Word 2007 and the color was there OK. Then I copied the table from Word and pasted it into the Word text import gadget in the visual editor and the import window also showed the color, but when I clicked "Insert", the version in the visual editor lost all the coloring.
I'm pretty sure that the WP 2.8 versions were ok.