Wake up world! There are alternatives to Windows products.

We were planning to ship a client a new domain server based on ClearOS.
Good spec machine with 2 x 1 TB hard disk in mirror. We got the operating system installed, the disks mirrored and the configuration started easily within 2 hours.
Our client then bought some software (without our recommendation or involvement) and it only runs on Windows server platforms using Microsoft SQL Server. So our Linux based, easy to configure domain server has now to be installed with the very expensive, very slow, very cumbersome Windows 2008 server software. (I had hoped never to have to install one of these again!).
We placed another disk in for the system to reside on and at our third attempt managed to get the OS loaded. Ok now time to set up the mirror on the 1 TG disk. Remember apart from the extra hard disk this is exactly the same hardware as we used before - not a new machine with different hardware - exactly the same kit.
We created the mirror (using the whole disk) and after 2 hours the format was only 24% complete! Six hours later we return to the machine to find the mirror resynching but only 51% complete!! I thought overnight disk formats went out with Novell Netware V2!!! And what is it resynching, there is no data on the disk!!!! (No, I do not want an answer but I want the boys and girls at Microsoft to ask themselves that question).
Has anyone in Microsoft ever tried to do this operation? I cannot believe that any developer would think this level of performance was acceptable.
So wake up world. There is no need to design and write programs that only run on Windows platforms. There is no need to rely on the inefficient Windows software. Or pay the over inflated prices Microsoft charge. (Hey, did you know that to buy a 3 pack set of Win7 OEM costs more that buying 3 individual packs).
Let's not settle for mediocrity, let's push for systems that allow us to benefit from the high performance hardware we can now get.