It's the first menu item in the left most menu of the Conflict Solver. Where did you search?

No, this checkbox should be shown on each repository where you are pulling the first time - until you select it.

Can also perfectly be done from the Journal.

Present in SmartGit 8.1 preview 3

Just for my understanding: you have multiple remotes and in each one is a master you have checked out?

This was upon user request because novice users created unintentionally a lot of branches tracking the same remote branch.

You already can get it from http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/preview and invoking Help | Check for Latest Build.