One thing I don't like about many of the things in Google labs is the lack of settings like that. I also don't like that there is no way to set how much offline data Gears will store.
I have the same problem with Google Earth. What labels, points and such it shows seems to depend on the position and shape of the moon rather than on the position of the screen and the zoom level. Sometimes I want to see something (like a village's name) that I just know is there but I have to center the screen on something next to it and then try a couple of zoom levels to see if I can make it show up.
Also, Picasa with its smooth scrolling. I try to scroll somewhere by dragging the scrollbar or clicking it and instead of scrolling where I drag or click it, it scrolls smoothly (read: slowly) at a top speed of maybe three pages per second. Aargh!
Oh yeah, Google Earth has this too: when you click the N on the compass to realign your screen with the cardinal directions, they thought it would be neat to make it turn really really smoothly. And it seems the closer your screen is to perfect alignment, the slower it turns.
The frustrating part is that Google should know this and make it configurable. I have no idea why they refuse to do this all the time. (Though I haven't used their stuff in a while so I have no idea if it's been fixed by now.)
