Listening to hak5 ep 0414,
Some interesting stuff i came across.
Keeping your pc “steady” instead of using ghost or vm.

www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Some other applications that keeps things clean and neat
Sandboxie www.sandboxie.com/
Was discussed in-depth in episode of 172 of the Security Now podcast as well, when steve gibson interviewed the creator.
twit.tv/sn172

Unetbootin
Allows “burning” of iso to usb thumbdrive, suitable for creating bootable “cds” to your thumbdrive
unetbootin.sourceforge.net/