jobeard what you say is true on my system aswell.
For example I have one file named: dogbone profile.docx
I can find it by searching for just: .docx
And I can find it by searching for: dogbone
But I can not find it by searching for just: bone
To do that I need to add the asterisk, so this works: *bone
And that is what I meant by the quote
"That's not so bad you might say, but why make the change, and why isn't it consistent? Why can I find vnc if I search for "tight" or "ultra" without an asterisk at the end of the string?"
As for your search: "check"
And it returning files like topic185.html & mysql-DataTypes.html
That is because the content of those files contain the word "check"
This is the nice thing IMO with Win7 search, it indexes file content aswell, making it possible to find files that you have no idea what they are named, so long as you know what is written in the files...