you could build a desktop theme instead, with big 256*256 PNG icons for the emulations program to make it less windows intrusive. i suggest Avedesk for this purpose:
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/forumdisplay.php?f=75
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=287831
it is really light on resources and very useful for commodities, here a screenshot of my current windows setup