The problem is not just the sysdepends is deprecated, it is not accurate.

Example:

create a table

create a procedure that selects from the table

drop the table (which deletes records in sysdepends)

create a table with the same name

The procedure still runs, still depends on the table, but no record in sysdepends

Even if they fixed that problem in 2005/2008 you still won't have tables referenced in dynamic SQL, etc..

It is not that hard to write some code to search syscomments (or sys.sql_modules)

(like the code in the article searching the job command field)

Of course it helps if your naming convention is such that it reduces false positives.