Trying to summon Merlyn? ;-)

It will only do an automatic refresh once in a 24 hour period, and that can be tuned via the /apps/hildon/update-notifier/check_interval GConf key (value is in minutes).

Equivocal raises a valid point though, and it's something that's been bugging me for a while. Every time you connect there's all sorts of stuff on the tablet waking up (email accounts, rtcomm accounts, rss feeds, AGPS, weather applets and so on) and fighting each other for CPU cycles and bandwidth. In normal (read: WiFi) circumstances the "storm" is usually over after a few seconds but on slower links it can be quite bad and made worse by stuff timing out and retransmitting. I wonder if it's somehow possible to delay some less time-sensitive stuff from updating immediately upon connection. Eg one probably wants their SIP accounts registering asap, but it's ok if the application catalogue refreshes a minute later.