Guake for Windows
If you ask me, Guake is the next best thing since sliced bread for GUI-based Linux users. It allows you to open a persistent, transparent terminal window by pressing F12 while in Gnome. Did I mention it's toggle-activated. Meaning when you don't need it in front of you, you press F12 again and it slips into your top bar. The transparency is great for when you are reading an article and want to see the commands you need to run through the terminal window.
So on to my dilemma. My work machines are all Windows-based and I found myself doing more and more remote Linux management using them. Now if only I could find a Guake alternative for Windows... I spent the good part of a weekend trying to do just that. I finally stumbled upon a few great articles that helped me piece it all together...
Combine PuttyTray, Launchy, and putty-launchy-plugin and you've got yourself a darn close match to Guake.
I've used Launchy before, so I had that installed. PuttyTray was new to me, but came up when searching for transparent putty. After installing and launching PuttyTray, click the Window option on the left.
You'll notice the Window transparency option at the bottom. I find setting it between 175 and 185 works best for me, but try it out on your own setup to fine tune.
If you're also looking to have the putty terminal be a certain size or fill up the entire screen, you can adjust this by playing with the Columns & Rows settings within PuttyTray.
The last piece is the putty-launchy-plugin. Install it, and open the Launchy options (Alt+Space and press the little gear in the top right). Click Plugins and you'll notice a new plugin called Putty. Specify the path to your PuttyTray executable and adjust the remaining settings as needed.
Now, to launch a persistent, transparent terminal window, simply press Alt+Space and type in "ssh". If you get further into it you'll notice that your saved sessions can be executed from Launchy as well. Enjoy!
Decrease the time spent using the Start menu
At first use, the Windows Vista (and now Windows 7) Start menus are a bit odd. I thought it was short-sighted of Microsoft to make the menu so small and require scrolling, but what it did was force me to use the search feature. Just type the name (or even part of the name) of the program you'd like to launch and press enter. That's it, you've launched the program. You may think that it's a small thing, but when you're constantly opening new applications it gets to be quite the time save.
On to the point of this article, Launchy. Launchy takes the search capability a step further by not requiring you to use a mouse. Again, another seemingly small task to move your hand to your mouse and click the Start button, but when your hands are typically on the keyboard it's another bit of saved time. 
Simply press Alt+Spacebar and you have access to the Launchy window.
Type in the name of the application you'd like to launch and hit enter. If there are applications you typically use, you can alter the configuration to only have to type in a certain key command to launch that application.
Another perk of having Launchy is the ability to completely clear your desktop. You no longer need shortcuts!