<< Another interesting thing that they are saying is that IB 7 was able
to restore many corrupted FB databases(?!). >>

That probably relates specifically to the removal of validation on a default
gbak restore.
Previously it was possible to back up a database, only to find validation
errors on the restore
due to various problems. Using the "new" version of gbak under IB7.1 this is
no longer an issue.

Paul