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My last Linux-oriented administrator would easily question that. They're quite easy, if you know what you're doing. Since you don't, you assume no one else does.

You must have me confused with someone else. I use and administer Linux boxes every day; in all likelihood, I could mop the floor with anybody you could provide. So I'm familiar with the differences between the platforms -- and, I must say, administering Windows boxes takes far less time than Linux. BUT: You have to make an initial investment in configuring them properly. That means no running as Admin, turn on the firewall, install an antivirus program, push updates and app deployment thru global system policy, stop malicious email attachments at the server, do proxy filtering to limit what people can do online, etc. That's just rational IT policy. And you've already admitted that you're unwilling/unable to do them same. Which means you have to deal with cowboy users causing damage. I don't; hence, it doesn't take me much time.

If my specs say MS SQL Server required, then I don't even consider Macs or Linux, so there's no TCO comparison.

Many users are faced with equivalent dilemmas -- and the dearth of choices on the Mac makes it harder.

Where did you get that last part from?

See above

I use and administer Linux boxes every day; in all likelihood, I could mop the floor with anybody you could provide.

I doubt it if they're difficult for you to administer. I still remember my first bout with administering IIS long ago. I had to wade through various dialog boxes with various settings and checkboxes to get my work done. I was wishing for a simple Apache httpd.conf file to edit -- especially when I had to mirror those IIS configuration settings on another server, which would have been a simple file copy on Linux.