One of the first things I do after installing Visual Studio is unbind the F1 key :)
hehe - so true. I lost count of the times I mistakenly hit F1, and then had to get coffee before it even loaded the help app, let alone allowed me to search.
If you google your search term and add 'MSDN' on the end (or do an MSDN site search e.g. 'site:MSDN.microsoft.com system.object' you hit the spot in the majority of cases - relieving that sinking feeling yet more :)
You can fix #2 by simply unmapping the F1 keyboard shortcut.
You can always remove the F1 shortcut from the Help.F1Help command (Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard)
and since you will be searching more on search engine(google or bing) you will get more knowledge as the knowledge on the cloud is msdn + a lot more... :-)
Total Commander is the bomb! :-)
I rebind my F1 to a Macro that takes the selected text and will perform a search for me. (Out to google or searchdotnet)
The only problem is that I find myself from time to time at at a client that has NO internet access and then I curse and need to connect the Cell Modem to the computer
Total Commander is AWESOME. First app I install on a new system!