Searching for a writing program with Polish characters.

Does anyone know the best solution to writing in Polish on an American laptop? I will be writing in Polish a lot, so I need a program in which using Polish characters is easy. I also remember from my last long stay in Krakow 5 years ago, that I had to switch something in the computer and that there was a solution involving switching the keyboard to a Palish keyboard, which was a problem as the letters "a" and "z" and many additional characters were in different positions than I'm used to. I would appreciate any advice. Needless to say a free download would be a plus.

You don't need any program for typing in Polish, in fact I am typing every day on laptop bought in USA and use Polish letters when I need them without any issue with 1 click (my default keyboard is English, and sometimes type in Polish too).
Every Windows system (and others too) allows to change keyboard very easily, maybe read this quick guide please (I assume you have Windows 7, but any Windows is quite similar):

http://wikitranslate.org/wiki/Polish_keyboard
and this
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/wind … t-language