Pagination should only be used if the dataset is yoo big to be reasonably rendered as one page, as it prevents you from using Ctrl-F or sorting the table by different columns Client-Side.
Or... you do all that sorting and searching server side as well. Which... I've got mixed feelings on this, and tend to not do it unless 1) it's an absolute must and/or 2) I'm using a toolkit that already supports it. Without those, I'd tend to just throw everything down and let the client be able to do all it's sorting/filtering/etc at the client.