>>>How would you explain the fact I got 2 Index seeks with your test code and my addition of populating tables?
>>>
>>>>No, no matter if PRIMARY KEY index is CLUSTERED or not in both cases I have INDEX SEEK.
>>>>Thanks again Walter.
>>
>>I can't. :-)
>>I even can not explain why my friend has INDEX SEEK directly w/o running any code to populate data.
>
>Hmm, that's the most complex task - find the difference in our SQL Server environment. I ran in SQL Server 2005 SP2, AFAIK all default settings.
>
>We need more statistics then from other people trying the same test.

Here SQL Server 2005 SP2 Developer, in the office SQL Server 2000 SP4 Enterprise
All default settings except default SQL Server collation.
But that is not a collation problem. I tried it the same example with collation set for DATABASE, TABLE and varchar field. I even tried w/o any varchar fields in Test2 table.