Where did you get the $25-$30 USD figure for Windows Server? Pricing a server at dell.com shows $799 for Standard and $3,295 for Enterprise (useful if you want more than 4GB RAM or 4 CPUs) But the OS isn't so expensive compared to SQL Server which is $5,799.00 for a Standard single processor license, or $25,009.00 for Enterprise (useful if you want all of the high-availability features).
