Register & Loginout functions

Hi, I’ve got a couple of questions (duhh 😉 and hope someone can help me out:

1) I want the majority of the users of my site to be read-only users, which I think are level 0 users? When I created such a user, I noticed that for level 0 users only, the Register and Login links don’t change once logged in, which is strange, because you can’t become a level 0 user until you have registered and logged in… When I have a look at their functions in wp-includes/template-functions-general.php, with my limited php knowledge, it seems that they were coded to do just that: not change.
I’d like to know, is there a particular reason for these links not to change and how can I make them change like all the others? Or have I missed something here?

2) Once logged in, all users are directed to the admin page. Is there a way to be directed to the index instead?
The only thing I can come up with is putting a hard link to /wp_admin/ (to be able to get to the profile area) in the sidebar and deleting the reference to /wp-admin/profile.php on line 178 of login.php. Then, if you login you always go to the blog root. I suppose it works, but it’s hardcoding and clunky at that. Does anyone have a more elegant solution?