To avoid confusion for new users we could rename the "Generate Coins" option to something like "Work on Blockchain". There are a lot of places where the term "generate" appears (statusbar, -help, -generate, setgenerate, getinfo, key in wallet.dat).
Changing the menu and statusbar strings might be enough, though.
I like the idea of popping up a dialog box the first time they turn on generation, explaining what their chances of generating any coins is.
Although the right time to do that might be when 'headers only' mode is implemented, because the first time you turn on generate the client will have to download the whole block chain, and it would be nice to explain that, too.
This option was removed, so this bug is not needed anymore.