Paying for the NY Times online

I'm a little annoyed that the Times has gone over to charging a subscription fee for some of it's "premium" content--including pretty much all of the op-eds, a la Salon. I consume a lot of my news and editorials online. I like to get a feel for different viewpoints, particularly from outside the U.S., so I hope this isn't a trend. Who could afford all those subscription fees? Particularly since I'm a partial subscriber for the home-delivered Times, as well as a full subscriber to my own city's newspaper, it's not like I'm opting out of the whole print newspaper scene. NYT is calling this an "upgrade" to my relationship with them. Ah, no... it's a lot of things, but not an upgrade. It says for print subscribers, the "upgrade" is free, but I have a sneaky feeling they're not including us Sunday-only people. The sign-up is sufficiently bothersome, that I haven't been able to find the answer to that question yet.