Meta tags are still used by Google for XX adult sites, otherwise they are discarded. However, other sites STILL use meta tags and search engines crawl each other, so by default, meta tags DO count.
they do count... the description tag is often used by google in the serps. I think H1 might be more important.. but it's hard to say
The title tag helps A LOT. I changed my title from "pokerisrigged.com" to "Poker is rigged | Forums" and saw a jump from page 11 to page 6 for competetive key phrase "poker forums".. The meta description is mainly useful for capturing a SE browser's eye. For example, if your site has a lot of key words in the meta description (don't spam it though) then they will be highlighted bold when a view scrolls by and will most likely catch their attention more than the surrounding sites.
Yup that's true. A lot of ppl out there still using meta tag to get their website index with the correct keywords. meta tags are very useful, even me still using on it now.
META TAGS does nothing for Google rankings. They are still important, though. It's good web practice to have unique meta for every page.