I've had a bit of a break from Elite (actually been playing Fallout 4 Far Harbour) while things settled down after the upgrade.
I had a bit of a play about with the Beta but that was mainly messing about with ships I couldn't normally afford.
I'm on an exploration trip in the main game, 30-odd klys from Sol, sort of heading towards Beagle Point.
A couple of things since 2.1 seem to be making things easier.
Firstly, bookmarks are great to highlight a few landmarks along the way as an aid to navigation.
Secondly, it seems to me the system map generation has gotten much faster. I can have a look at the nav screen, decide whether or not the system's worth looking at, and get a map generated before the main star scan has finished. That really saves a lot of time, I used to get really bored with waiting for the map to come up.