I hear ya. I usually leave my player running on my desktop thus I do
not open/close every time I want to use it. I just select and click
play. I work twelve hour shifts and sometimes do not get to my
desktop for a couple of days. It is nice that amarok automatically
downloads the files and have them ready for me when I get around to
listening to them. Also, I get the cast just in case it is removed
before I get around to actually downloading it. And I'm OCD and want
to make sure I have complete series for when I listen to them later
down the road ;-) Autodownload ensures this.
Well, perhaps a periodical update (every hour, for example) would be enough, not annoying at all.
Benja