If you're a fan of Wikipedia, you're going to love this Windows Vista hack I found on ITworld.com. You can add a "Search Wikipedia" option from the Vista's Instant Search box that's on your Windows start menu. It's really not that hard, if you are familiar with using the Local Policy editor. Here are the steps:
- Press Windows Key + R and type in gpedit.msc, click "OK"
- Open the User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Instant Search\Custom Instant Search Internet Search provider policy setting.
- Enable the policy setting, type Search Wikipedia in the first textbox and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%w in the second textbox, and click OK.
- Open a command prompt and type gpupdate/force to immediately apply the new policy setting.
After you do that, you'll see 3 search options: in addition to "Search Everywhere" and "Search the Internet", you'll now see "Search Wikipdedia," too! How cool is that?
This probably works for all languages, if you substitute "en" with your country's code.