While I really like the look of the Start11 menu, it’s simply too buggy and impacts performance too much to use. This is been the case every time I’ve tried to use Start11 again over several years and several computers (and I have had similar experiences with other Stardock software as well, but Start11 is the one I really wanted to work).

First there, are number of bugs which impact usability. From sometimes making the PC run more slowly, to crashing and restarting when I right-click in the start 11 menu, to hijacking key combos until I restart the computer. The interface still has annoying unpleasantries, like being unable to actually click on the start menu icons to open the previews unless you get weird behavior - you have to hover and wait for the icons to pop up. Showing the Start menu itself is often slow, so by the time you press the button again to see if it is working, Start11 opens and closes the menu immediately. It also doesn’t find many programs as well as the original Start. Win11’s native start menu will pullup “Internet Download Manager” if I search “IDM”. Start11 will not. And of course, the seemingly unpredictable crashing and restarting here as well.

(I know I'm probably going to get a response telling me to clean boot or reinstall or any other number of troubleshooting steps. As far as I'm concerned, Start11 is a mature enough product and the team has been at this long enough that they should be able to avoid these types of issues, at least enough to make it comparably usable to the Windows Start menu - or just admit that the nature of the Windows API means the software will have unavoidable conflicts or issues that require significant manual time and effort to get it to work if that's the case. That's more of a dev issue, not one the users should have to deal with.)

I really wanted to like and use Start11, but it’s repeatedly been disappointing, performed poorly, and this level of quality has been maintained across other Stardock products I’ve tried as well, and these have all occurred across several computers with plenty of system resources remaining. So I’m uninstalling for the last time.