Cyrilic on windows XP

[joaopitacosta.livejournal.com]

Dear all, I'm about to install the windows XP back to my laptop in english and, as I'm now learning russian for a while, would like to have that option you have that you press ctrl+shift and you change to cyrilic characters.
How can I have that?

words for "drink"

[inoctiluci.livejournal.com]

Someone recently sent this article to me. In it, Aleksander Nikishin claims that there are "350 synonyms to the word 'drink' in Russian." Thoughts? I wonder if he's referring to the verb or the noun.