I'm fully with you - there are many great solutions out there. I'm pretty convinced that the next version of Windows will be almost free (license cost) in the corporate environment (with private users it comes pre-installed already and you don't get a discount if you don't take it). I expect that MS's selling proposition will be around the ease of maintenance with existing know-how and better integration around virtualisation / cloud services with MS Windows.

One of the reasons MS is so successful within the (higher) education sector is the general risk avoidance of ITC management in these institutions (in the UK, central government wants cloud services so cloud are being implemented) and being driven by revenue-based investment vs CapEx - MS caters directly for that with their packaging and existing framework contracts already in place. One example - currently you get a US$100k StorSimple appliance from MS for free / paid soft via 1 year Azure services cost for scale-out storage service e.g. to replace shared drives (yes many universities still use them).

The other area where MS has done their home work is with EU Data Protection laws / DPA in the UK where they negotiated a full turn-key framework with JaNet that allows universities to be compliant without going to another 6m-1y assessment as they currently still have to do with Google.

Have a look at http://linuxgizmos.com/stick-computer-runs-on-quad-core-atom... to see what I meant with sticks plugged into the monitor - guess these certainly can be called commodity end user devices.