Fox,
You will need to learn drift alignment if your desires stretch to long exposure astrophotography at reasonable focal lengths. I am self taught have you tried out the simulator here:
http://www.petesastrophotography.com...uidingsim.html
It is not as bad as it seems at first. I get initial alignment by marking the tripod leg positions where I set up - the "carry and plonk method" it gets me close enough for short exposures...
When I said CRUX is the only constellation drawn I meant the only S.Hemisphere only constellation, those visible in the N as well as the S are shown also even with a location in the S.
And yes Vixen do update the Starbook code from time to time however it is fair to say they are not very responsive to S hemisphere needs and updates are infrequest (eg PEC has only just been added) so I would not count on the updates you mention occuring soon. That said all the Vixen mounts now have some form of Starbook - perhaps this means their support staff are now free to enhance the code rather than work on new releases...