'Too many authentication failures' nuisance

[Chris Green]

I have several ssh keys in the ~/.ssh directory of my desktop machine.
As a result whenever I try to connect to a system which uses password
authentication I get the "Too many authentication failures" error.

Yes, I know I can get round this by setting PreferredAuthentications
but this is rather a nuisance to have to do individually for all
systems that use password authentication.  It also means that I have
to do it for a 'casual' ssh access to a system which I'm unlikely to
access more than once.

Is there any way around this problem? 

-- 
Chris Green