I currently have exactly one computer, an eeePC running Win XP. The fan started making a lot of noise, it got slow, and the BSOD made its appearance a couple of times.

So I took it in to a local computer repair place. The guy cleaned the cat hair out of the machine, took some pictures of the inside (looks a little baked, the air flow was bad) and recommended a reformat/reinstall because there are too many apps installed for such a low capacity machine and new RAM because the old RAM was baked. Said that would get it back to speed. The cost would have been a shade over $200, and you can buy these machines new for about $300, so I said no. He sells refurbished computers, by the way.

It's been running dog-slow. Watch a window refresh slow.

I don't think bad RAM can slow a machine down noticeably. BSOD, sure, but not slowdown. Not sure if Windows does retry on RAM operations, but 10 nor so retries on a RAM op isn't going to take noticeable time. And having too many apps installed might cause a little slowdown (registry clog, I guess) but not what I'm seeing. I was guessing a bad power supply making the hard disk run off-speed.

Anyway, I was poking around looking for background things to turn off to get a little more performance. And what should I find? Remote Desktop is running. Turn that off, and now I have a much happier machine.

Now, my thought is that the guy turned it on. Maybe just so he didn't have to suffer with my tiny screen and keyboard. And maybe he just forgot to turn it off when he was done.

BUT...

Am I paranoid to think:
1) this means he can now use my machine to do Bad Things in my name.
2) this is a great way to convince me I ought to buy another machine. Which he conveniently has one right here, and he'll take my irreparable hulk off my hands for $5.00 or whatever for parts.
3) he looks like a freakin' genius when he 'fixes' my machine by turning RD off at the same time as his reformat/new RAM costs me neat the cost of a new machine.