Sorry, I had overlooked your message in my inbox. In Hardy I have setup
a static address, and right now when I click on "Connection information"
it tells me "no valid connections available". Regarding how to treat
this issue, I have quite a few considerations to share:

1) I don't know why NetworkManager does not rely on
/etc/network/interfaces, but at first sight it seems terribly wrong to
create another configuration system. Why is NetworkManager not a GUI to
interact with interfaces??

2) It is even more strange that the IP is only allocated at logon time;
plenty of users have more than one computer at home, and quickly even
the most basic users will want to share stuff, e.g. with NFS, and then
you need  an always on address, preferably static because it is easy to
use hosts; no need to mess with DNS (been there, regretted it).

3) There are plenty of situations where users are advised to
check/change stuff on interfaces, regardless of distributions; having
another system looks just plain wrong. One even expects that
NetworkManager applet changes the file interfaces.

Now, I like very much to have the network icon there. Networking is
often subject to failures, and having it handy is definitely a good
idea. Being able to quickly check net info is nice. I even would like to
have more stuff there. Yeah, I know about System/Administration/Network
Tools. I believe a fair numbers of users will end up changing the file
interfaces, without realizing NetworkManager is another setup; and then
believe, as I did, there is a bug. And then loose the function of a nice
tool.

How to treat it? 
- preferably use only /etc/network/interfaces (but I know too little about 
NetManager to be sure this makes sense). 
- just show what's coming from ifconfig (showing "no valid active messages" is 
simply not good)

I agree with you (Peteris) that it is a policy decision, but the first
impression the user gets is one of a bug. And in politics, perception
becomes truth :) (I see it now as a design bug)

-- 
[hardy] 'Connection Information' is greyed out in pop-up menu when right 
clicking on Network Manager applet
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/197946
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