No you don't have to do anything!
Chaz, with all due respect you can choose to use regular plain text or the new text editor. When you go to post your message it should ask you which text editor you would like to use.
Is it not giving you a choice??

Rundenski!
That is a great idea - maybe our dear Webmaster could fit that into an option in our personal settings and then we would only have to choose once what editor we want to use. If we ever wanted to change we could do so from our profile??
Another thing to think of too, is that there are other forums out there that can be just as complicated because of special text features....it's not as if we are suddenly the only site using special posting features.
Just another adjustment and we'll survive.
I just clicked in here and found yet another feature, and I busted out laughing.
Looks like the Webmaster is having fun himself. He's come down with web decorating fever!!!!!
He'a always managed to work out the kinks, I'm sure he'll be tinkering until he gets it all down just right.
Meantime, I gotta figure out what all this stuff is and does...