I'm talking about advanced non-standard hardware features like management features and hardware diagnostic features that rely on proprietary software to understand. These are extraneous when simply talking about computing, but when managing a large number of servers, they can be invaluable.

Not that I'm claiming I like Windows. I don't. I'd rather have a Linux or other Unix server without those management features than a Windows server with them. I'm just pointing out that you're paying for those hardware features and you're either going to spend a lot of time getting them to work or you're not going to get them to work at all.