It seems to me that the way Recycle Bin works should be different. Currently, if I don't manually empty it, it just fills up and the first thing I know about it is when something crashes due to "out of disk space". I can empty the bin. That's fine for anything that's a month old, but the stuff deleted in the last few days is more likely to be something I recover. There's no option to delete just the old stuff, just everything. Yes, I could open it in explorer and do it manually. I suppose for some, they would like everything in the RB until they give it the all clear and empty it. For me, it would be better to treat it as a staging post, holding deleted files for as long as possible but clearing those files, oldest first, as and when space is required by other files. The space occupied by the RB would be ignored when determing free space on the drive, as all of its space would be free to be used at any time as the disk fills up. A user could of course, in the interests of security, choose to empty it if they so desired, thus purging anything in the "staging post". I appreciate this would have an effect on performance. ie. on a full disk (including RB files), to create a new file the OS would first have to clear enough old files from the RB to provide the space required by the new file. How big a hit on performance, testing required... Perhaps the method used could be user selected, and those that choose my system would accept the performance hit to gain the advantages. Bring on the flames :)

Read this: http://www.zerosignal.co.uk/2010/06/manage-recycle-bin-with-binmanager/ Or maybe write your own program to do what you want? I realize you think it should already be built-in, but since it isn't you'll have to come up with a work-around. That's just the way it is :-) Instead of using the RB as a temporary storage place (which, frankly, boggles my mind- RB isn't, and never was, designed as a temporary holding space), create another folder on your hard drive for that purpose, then use a batch file in Startup to permanently delete anything older than XX days. Seems like a lot of work for something that should be so simple. Good luck with whatever you decide to do :-) SC Tom

For anyone who thinks like me, I am currently evaluating Undeluxe by Resplendence Software that looks like it will replace the recycle bin in a way I find useful. This is not a plug, its a valid answer to a fair question.