Anything with stepper motors will be desperately slow.
No they can move quite fast if you give them enough voltage and a chopping current limiting supply and then accelerate them to top speed. In other words do it properly.
Well that is not what I call a table, jabber was right you need a router, although I am not sure what you want to use it for because what you want to route will determine the materiel it's made of and the design.
There is also the problem of backlash, some solutions like a ball race drive are very expensive. What you have to decide is what sort of accuracy you want / need.
There are router kits / assembled mechanics from about $400 upwards, best bet is to go on ebay and see what you find. It depends on where about in the world you are as to what is available.
For home made look at the reprap machines (gogle it) , full open source plans and variants. Then there is the cup cake and the maker bot that have a following as well.
There is nothing to stop you using a position sensor or optical encoder with a stepping motor but you will not skip pulses if you get the setup correct. The problem with liner sensors is that they are expensive. You can always solve the memory problem with limit micro switches to allow you to calibrate on switch on.