Years ago I had one of the early Acer Tablet PCs which came with something called Zinio - http://www.zinio.com/. You could download magazines from that and it worked very well, though slowly because no one had broadband.
I like that option. Acer now do an attractive looking tablet for £599 which for me would make a hell of a lot more sense than an iPad. Has an 8 hour battery life supposedly too.
Will try NYT too. Thanks!