From my perspective, I think FTM 2011 is a pretty good piece of software. I like it because it is set up to do active computer research. The downloads from Ancestry and clipping from other websites are big research plusses. I have to say I love your layout as well: Plan, People, Places, Media, Sources, Publish, Websearch. The People pages (both Family and Person) are also very well designed. They are all ordered logically for research.
(Also, if you try to port the new Ancestry Family layout to FTM, please don't replace your current screens...add new screens if you must.)
As with everything else in life, nothing is perfect and everything must grow and change. As to the speed issues that I keep reading about I have no previous version to compare against. I can say after so many downloads from Ancestry, I have to detach and re-attach to re-gain download speed. The problem may be in the Ancestry interface and not FTM.
I have made 2 previous suggestions: 1.) a utility to combine duplicate facts within a person and 2.) to have capability to revert a place order ( county, state, county, township or whatever) and sort. I stick with them. I still think they would be valuable research aids and may solve some speed issues.
But to close the year, I have one more possible research aid. I have 4 trees, one for each grandparent. I move back and forth between the 4. I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to color code the nodes. It could be used in many ways. Ex. I could use to show where I left off and should renew my research. It could also be used to highlight the nodes where you have problems or issues. Or it could be used as a high, medium, low confidence branding of the node.
Anyway, think about it. No response needed. Good luck in the New Year.
Bud