Most Americans who type in Russian prefer a phonetic keyboard in which the location of cyrillic keys roughly corresponds to the letters that sound most like them in English.   For example, the "S" key will type a Cyrillic "C".  In order to type in Russian using a phonetic keyboard, you first must download and install the phonetic keyboard and then enable the Russian keyboard in Windows XP.

Obtaining a phonetic keyboard

Instructions and files for downloading and installing the Russian phonetic keyboard can be found at the College of William and Mary web site:
http://www.wm.edu/modlang/tech_notes/ruskbd.php

Here is the layout of the phonetic keyboard you will download:

Default:

Shift + Key:

Enabling the Russian keyboard in Windows XP

In the Start menu, find and select Control Panel. In the resulting window, double click the icon called "Regional and Language Options".

In the Regional and Language Options window, click on the tab at the top labeled 'Languages' and then click the Details... button.

On the Settings tab in this window, you will find a list of all the languages currently enabled. Click the Add button to add a new language to the list.
In the Input language drop-down list, select Russian (or any other language you would like to install). In the field labeled Keyboard Layout/IME, Russian should already be selected. This is the non-phonetic keyboard layout.  Just below it you should see "Russian (translit)".  Select on this keyboard configuration for the phonetic layout.

Click OK to close this window and then Apply in the underlying window. Again click OK to close this window.

In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, you should now see an icon similar to . Click this icon to see a list of the installed languages, select the language in which you would like to type.