I am the IT guy for a small business, and we all have HTC Desire phones. Many employees will attempt to connect to an open WiFi and find that it is a captive portal. Once they connect, they will forever have that problem. I guess I can just instruct them to do as you say here.

Thanks for this idea. The problem I have with it is that it is a little cumbersome for people who travel a lot and will see a lot of WiFi networks like that.