Originally Posted by dougdo

If you type a lot of accented characters, as I do when I write in Spanish, there's an easier way.

For WinXP: In Control Panel, Regional and Language Options, Languages tab, click Details button.
Then select the Keyboard and click Add.
Add United States-International
and make sure it is selected as Default Input Language

Then you can type any accented character with 2 keystrokes. For example, to get ö you type " then o, to get é type ' then e, to get ñ type ~ then n. If you only want the special character, e.g. just a quote character type it and then a space (or it will just appear if the character typed next doesn't have an accented version). Once you're used to it, it's very fast.