If you want to take control over the mipmapping, then a good option is to use a .DDS plugin, theres one for Photoshop and PaintShopPro9. That would let you define the number of mipmap images, how they are compressed and laid out. Then save your images as .DDS, and when you load them up, they have the mipmapping already calculated.
Disabling it can produce some horrible jaggies and shimmering, especially with a high contrast texture, like the grids there. At least there are options to get rid of the problem, take control of mips, make the lines thicker and disable mips, use anisophalic blending... lots to experiment with.

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
