I strongly dislike EA, but I look at each game separately. With some of their sims 2 "stuff" packs, they have seriously added like 20 new items or outfits and charged quite a few bucks for it. Its disgustingly dissapointing, but I retain hopes for Spore.
Although charging money for the demo seems like another sad attempt at milking their customers for cash, I really can't blame them as they DO have a free demo as well. If they had not allowed people to pay for access to the full demo there would only have been the limited version, as releasing the full editor might hurt their sales (some people might just settle for the editor). In any case, can we really blame the publisher for giving us the OPTION of paying for premature access to their product?
It is not as if the mere presence of this option should hinder anyone...
That said they make many bad decisions, and whenever I see their name on something I start fearing they'll screw it up like they have done to many other games in the past.