All of the bugs seem to be ironed out, except for 2...
1. Positioning is lost, as you have seen. Should be fixed in next release
2. Rotation only works when first creating emitters. I will be piosting some sample code in bug reports at some point.
You can make simple effects very easily. There are about 12 examples that make good starting-points. I'm putting together a showcase of some other, more complex stuff at the moment.
I love particles, I even use them in 2D apps, the following game has up to 800 particles on-screen at any time...
BatVink