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!