As per the subject, do you Windows users use a control panel such as Plesk or HELM, or do you just use Remote Desktop?
I have always used Plesk but it does seem to overcomplicate a lot of things. It’s also rather slow (currently on version 8.6).
I’d generally argue you should never use a control panel, but if you’ve got RDP access to the windows server there is absolutely no reason to need a control panel.
On shared hosting it is not possible to provide rdp access to each and every users. It is not possible and recommended as far as security is concerned. However if you have dedicated server or vps then you can go without control panel as you can have full access to servers.
That’s the reason plesk control panel on windows shared server is widely use to manage the websites of clients.
If you are experiencing slowness on plesk then there need to check for the reasons of slowness.
I don’t do shared hosting. No real reason to in 2012 – if you don’t have that much traffic, just get an ec2 micro instance.
The one thing to be concerned with using the standard RDP port (if not using VPN connection) is that it is easily hackable (passwords & username in clear text). You can change from the default RDP port but that is only slightly better. Is it possible to use an open-vpn connection and then RDP?
That is why you either use VPN, IPsec, or configure RDP to use SSL/TLS.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2008/07/21/configuring-terminal-servers-for-server-authentication-to-prevent-man-in-the-middle-attacks.aspx
As suggested use VPN and since its a windows server keep everything updated 
and look out for latest vulnerabilities. No real reason to use a control panel if your are on RDP
The same goes for all public facing web servers regardless of OS. Do you realize how many Linux servers are hacked into on a daily bases? A lot. Because fools believe Linux is a magic bullet and lazyness is alright with it. IT IS NOT! The system is only as secure as the person maintaining it allows it to be.
I’ve been using Plesk for the last couple of years and everything has been great. Easy to manage and for the administrators and users.
Yes I have watched how people hack Linux, which has driven me to be very vigilant with the updates and security patches that the OS maintainers provide.