One powerful way to refine your searches is by using search prefixes: words that you follow with a colon and then the search term itself. Search prefixes work with most  search engines.

For instance, use the prefix "site" to specify that you’d like to restrict your search to a particular site. The search phrase "site:microsoft.com windows xp downloads," for example, tells a search engine that you’d like it to retrieve links to downloads applicable to Windows XP from Microsoft’s web pages.

You can use the "filetype" prefix to search for specific types of documents or files. This is very useful if you’re searching for, say, Excel files–or for PDFs that you can download and print out in an attractive format. Let’s say, for example, that you’d like to search for a PDF of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. The proper search phrase would be "sun also rises filetype:pdf."

Other handy prefixes include "define," for searching for definitions, and "related," to search for sites that are similar to ones you like. The "define" prefix is especially nice for students, young and old, who can instantly retrieve definitions of a word from a wide variety of sources.

If you haven’t customized your Windows 7 Start menu, find out what you’ve been missing. Right-click the Start orb, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the resulting Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, click the Customize button to launch the Customize Start Menu dialog.

There, you’ll see a couple dozen ways that you can make the Start menu your own—and make it much more useful than it is by default. Many of the options there control the items that appear on the right side of the Windows 7 Start menu.

For instance, you can give yourself direct Start-menu access to features you probably considered the domain of other applications. Your browser’s Favorites menu, for example, can be ported directly to the right side of the Start menu, as can links to your network, documents, homegroup, downloads, and videos. You can even bring back the Run command, which was available by default in the Start menu of earlier version of Windows. You can also create more space in the Start menu by turning off the "large icons" option.

Finally, notice the "Number of recent programs to display" setting at the bottom of the Customize Start Menu dialog box. Adjust this number up or down to change how many recently-launched applications show on the top level of the Start menu—on the left-hand side. Increasing the number from the default of 10 will, of course, make your Start menu longer.

If you end up being unhappy with your customizations of the Start menu and want to return to the default settings, click the Use Default Settings button.

Applications find their way to the top level of Windows 7’s Start menu according to how recently or how often they’re used. That’s a handy feature, but most of us have programs that we’d like to have always pinned to the top level for quick access.

There are a couple of ways to do just that. First, if you open your Start menu and see a program that you’d like to have permanently on the top level, just grab it with your mouse cursor and start dragging it to the top of the Start menu. The words "Pin to Start menu" will appear, and at that point you can simply let the icon go, and it will be pinned to the top of the menu.

If you are a couple of levels into the Start menu and you see a program you want pinned to the top level, just right-click the icon and select "Pin to Start menu" from the context-sensitive menu. Again, the application will be pinned to the top of the menu.
You can also pin documents or files to the top of your Start menu. To do so, locate the file using Windows Explorer or another file selection tool, and drag the file to the Start orb. When you see the words "Pin to Start menu," just release your mouse button, and your file will snap to the top of the Start menu.