You hit the exact issue in you original post. How would the browser know if you wanted to go to wral.com, wral-tv.com or wral.org? No way it could.

>I wrote a bunch of stuff then deleted it. It was superfluous. It comes down to that I would want it to just go to the site. I have search engines I use when I don't know what I'm really looking for.
>
>>But how would the browser know which site you wanted? IMO, it's working the way it should.
>>
>>You can change search providers under Tools -> Internet Options. The default search provider, Live Search, is Microsoft's search engine.
>>
>>>You would think that if I type "wral" into the browser address bar, it would know that I probably want www.wral.com by default. Instead, it brings up something called Live Search, which shows a list of possible sites. Oddly, the first one is not www.wral.com, but www.wral-tv.com. Maybe the option to handle that is in IE7 somewhere, but I haven't come across it. I know, what about all those people who wanted www.wral.org? That's why I would want a default setting.