Kill an application pronto
There is a little-known context menu option in Task Manager that helps kill applications more quickly than "End Task". Right-click on the application in the Applications tab and select "Go To Process". This brings to you the correct process on the Processes tab, at which point you can right-click and select "End Process" or "End Process Tree". This kills the process immediately w/o the wait that's associated with the "End Task" option. (I believe "End Task" respectfully asks to process to end itself and if it doesn't respond after some time, it then prompts you to kill it.)
This is unnecessary when there is only one instance of the application you want to kill; however, sometimes you may have several instances of an application (IE, for example) and you don't know which process is associated with the application you want to kill.