Thank you, Beastie and Carpetsmoker, for your additional insights.
I will say that while I may have a few "usability" tools such as FF (with adblock and no-script) and cygwin (for a usable shell) and similar tiny things, the platform runs what they gave me.
My consulting has nothing to do with client system decisions, in any way, shape, or form. If it did, at the very least some Root Cause Analysis would be required on every recovery -- if for nothing else then for some very nice pricing leverage on any future acquisitions of other MS products under consideration.
Thanks for letting me vent. I'd love to hear from folks who are responsible for large numbers of MS desktops, but I may not get that on this small forum.