Fedora 9 NetworkManager

[Gene Poole <gene poole macys com>]

I've just installed the Preview of Fedora 9 on a desktop scale PC that was
previously running Fedora 8.  This desktop PC utilizes a wired network
ONLY.

During the install I answered all of the network questions as was expected
(i.e. Are we to use DHCP or Static - I picked static etc.) including the
DNS entries, Gateway entry.  All of the network worked until I booted after
applying 652 updates (su - root;  yum -y update).  After that reboot I
could only reach locations that were defined in my hosts file.  This
pointed me to look at resolv.conf and alas there were no entries in
resolv.conf only the message '# generated by NetworkManager, do not edit!'.
I listened to that message as issued the system-config-network command and
proceeded to update the DNS entries, performed a save, and then issued the
following 2 commands:  /etc/init.d/network stop  then  /etc/init.d/network
start.  After doing that I saw that the DNS were once again empty.  I
'corrected' this mess by starting webmin and stopping NetworkManager and
NetworkManager Dispatcher and changing the parameter so they would not
start at boot.  Once again did a system-config-network updating the DNS
entries.  Restarted the network and now all is well.

My questions are:
   Why is Network Manager messing with my wired network?
   If Network Manager has been updated so that it will work with a wired
   network, must it be DHCP?
   And maybe this is a Fedora question, but why can't I chose if I want
   Network Manager to do my network configuration?

TIA,
Gene Poole