Start Orb Creator is a freeware utility which allows you to create Windows 7 Start Buttons. Some features: – It creates perfect alpha bitmaps – Orbs are re-sized to the proper dimensions required…

If you have ever accidentally deleted a file in Windows or noticed that files have been deleted by hardware failures or computer virus attacks you know that file recovery software is the only option besides regular backups to access those files again. Windows users have the choice between many free and commercial data recovery programs which often differ in terms of functionality, reliability and performance. MultiStage Recovery is a commercial file recovery software that supports most digital storage devices such as hard drives, flash drives and data cards providing that they are formatted with a Windows file system.

Hansel and Gretel In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel , the two children leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way out of the forest. Unfortunately, in the story the breadcrumbs were eaten by birds, thus making this a less-than-ideal navigational aid .

A year ago, before I joined Windows 7 News, I published an article entitled “ Windows 7 and the Death of Search ” in which I criticised the new search facility in the then forthcoming Windows 7.  There are a great many reasons why this new way of searching came about, and why Microsoft changed it from the multi-level drop-down search of Windows XP.  I said… You’ll see that with Windows 7 it’s immediately considerably more difficult to do a contextualised search.  It’s still possible but you need to type text commands, and who is going to remember those?  I’ll publish a complete list in my Windows 7 Power Users Guide. I did, it’s a shame that I had to, and in the next few days I’ll release that part of the book as a free download for you here. Dan Plastina, the then group manager for “Find & Organize” in Windows 7, and the man responsible for leading the team that developed the libraries and the keyword search in that operating system, was quick to reply to my article.

Which is the Best Windows 7 Media Player? Part 1 This is sort of like a part two to my previous write-up about the best options for media in Windows 7

Microsoft and Amazon.com have signed a wide-ranging patent cross-licensing agreement that provides each company with access to the other’s patent portfolio. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was made clear that Amazon will be paying Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money as part of the arrangement. While Microsoft wouldn’t say which of its products and technologies Amazon is interested in, Microsoft did mention that Amazon’s Kindle, which employs open source and proprietary software components, as well as Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers are covered

Gizmodo takes a look at how Windows Phone 7 Series changes the landscape for phone manufacturers and ends Windows Mobile’s era of openness Read More: Gizmodo

A few days ago I wrote about the claims that Windows 7 was a memory hog , and that Windows 7 systems tended to be short on memory. The claims were made by “Craig Barth,” CTO of Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based company that has a small utility that collects Windows performance data and sends it to DMS’s servers, where it is then collated and interpreted. For its part, DMS was unimpressed with our coverage

Well well well look at this, I and many other tech sites posted this article about a company “XPNet” which claimed that its software had provided them with information that lead them to believe that Windows 7 machines were constantly maxing out their Ram and 86% of systems were using 90-95% of their available memory. Well it turns out that the man who made those claims, ” Craig Barth ” doesn’t actually exist, and neither do his outrageous facts. While I and many others were quick to set the facts straight, I was then backed up by you guys just to confirm that I wasn’t some chosen one who had never experienced these “false” claims made by Mr