If you are in web development, or even if you simply need to administer remote *nix servers, you would be familiar with PuTTY for SSH connections. A "branch" of this, is an relatively new application called PuTTY Tray.

It has a few very notable features out of the box, including the ability to minimise to the tray (rather than take up space on the taskbar), inbuilt transparancy options, reconnects automatically after shutdown (if you hibernate/suspend your laptop for example), and it now works on portable USB drives as standalone app. Worth checking out if you frequently use SSH!