I'm finding that the network manager only starts to work reliably after I've played around with system -> adminstration -> services and: + enabled NetworkManager (and dispatcher) - disabled "network" (or turned off its control of eth0 (TP) and eth1 (802.11blah) perhaps) can this be selected during install?
Yep, the 'network' service and NetworkManager are incompatible and mutually exclusive. NM is only enabled by default on LiveCD installs, I think. WE'll fix this in F9.