I have to agree. the lack of a defined newbie zone is pretty much irrelevant. About the only thing I could see being done there that might help newbies is keeping the strip miners out of the starter systems. In newbie chat there's someone asking why there aren't any asteroids to mine several times an hour, most people are understandably unhappy when they're told it's because macro miners strip the bulk of hisec dry very shortly after the servers come online.