I don't think one laptop per child will have a major effect.
It already has. The EEEPC (forecast sales 1st year 4,000,000 units), the Intel Classmate, the Everex system sold by Walmart are all reactions to the OLPC. Intel originally shrugged it off as impractical. The Classmate (with Linux was their response).
Microsoft has been reacting as well after initially ignoring then attacking the practicality of the OLPC. The pressure to put Windows XP on the EEEPC, on the Classmate and on the OLPC are examples of it. The 3 dollar XP in the Orient is another reaction. Microsoft fears Linux and low cost PCs. How do you justify selling an EEEPC for $400 without Microsoft products and $1000 with them?
Most of those low cost laptops are going to end up pilfered and sold on ebay.
I doubt it. Some will but not the majority.
For one thing it has a security system that the owner (which is not the student/child) can activate which will "brick" the machine after 2 weeks. Also those with the machines would have a hard time collecting money from an E-Bay sale I think.
Another thing is the appearance of the machine is distinctive but not exactly what I would call attractive. Machines like the EEEPC will compete against the E-bay sales and I would prefer the EEEPC over the OLPC for personal use.
Assuming they Also, while the current administration may be more conciliatory than the previous one, I doubt that any subsequent administration will change their policy for the foreseeable future. Compared with fighting terrorism, anti-trust litigation is not going to be a high priority.
The thing is that Bush established the policy soon after taking office and then likely did little. A successor need only indicate a change in policy and let the DOJ go back to being aggressive. The President need not be directly involved with any of the cases.
The two don't use the same resources. The DOJ isn't as much involved with the anti-terrorism as are such bodies as the CIA and FBI and those bodies are not involved much with the anti-trust.
As for the eeepc, the fact that it can run other OS' isn't going to really put a dent in MS. In the 80s and 90s, apple still had market share American schools purchased lots of apple IIs, and later macs. Most of the children who learned to use computers on those machines, myself included grew up to be windows users.
The situations are not comparable.
The situation then:Apple changed about that time. The Apple II was a home machine and used somewhat in schools and business but they were not seen as a business computer. The Apple III had "issues" and failed. The Lisa was business targeted and expensive and failed. The Macintosh abandoned all the things that made the Apple II popular with the home market and targeted businesses. Those businesses did not know Apple or respect it. A major mistake in my opinion. It also was totally transformed from the older computers and what you learned on an Apple II didn't migrate to the Mac.
IBM on the other hand was a known quantity to businesses and was designed with many of the same principles that the Apple II had but the Mac had abandoned. IBM was at the height of their power as well. They were facing an anti-trust suit but it never went to trial and therefore they never lost it. Only when the anti-trust was dropped did they return to the behaviour that brought the suit on in the first place. Then with MCA and OS/2 they lost that power in the microcomputer business. It was that renewed attempt to domineer and control that broke IBM's power.
The situation now:
Microsoft is in the Apple position but they have lost multiple anti-trust cases in multiple nations. They are behaving much more like IBM did when they were trying to control the industry with MCA and OS/2. IBM failed you will recall. Vista instead of being the mechanism of dominance is doing poorly enough that XP is having to be continued on offer by Microsoft to maintain their sales levels. Microsofts control fetish will be their downfall as it was IBM'S 20 years ago.
Linux on the other hand is in the IBM situation. Like IBM who was recognized by businesses from their larger computers, Linux with its compatibility with Unix standard is a known thing. Linux is growing (Redhat just had a year over year
profit increase of 39% for example). That growth in the face of the dominant position that Microsoft has is significant. Microsofts ability to dominate is far beyond what Apple had so it is much slower but progress is still occurring.
Those who like myself want to control our systems and not have them held hostage to Microsofts activation/deactivation abandon Windows.
Businesses that want/need to reduce costs abandon Windows either wholly or in part.
Businesses that cannot - by law - allow the remote access that Microsoft has been implementing
must abandon Windows.
Governments in many countries have mandated by law to have documents available without restriction but if they use the MS formats then they are violating those laws as they require Microsoft Office and Windows. That is why ODF is important as it can be implemented by anyone and therefore you get to choose what software to use and what OS not the government.
As ODF is adopted by governments those (mostly big) businesses that deal with them will have to adopt ODF as well. As they do so the requirement to use MS Office and MS Windows vanishes. The opportunity to cut costs by using Linux and Linux software becomes practical. Those same big businesses do business with smaller companies and they will of course mandate ODF which migrates the opportunity to break away from MS dominance down the food chain, step by step all the way to the bottom.
Do I think Microsoft will be destroyed? No. Do I think they will lose their absolute market dominance? Yes.
I don't think any one year will be the "Year of Linux" just as in spite of forecasts to the contrary there was never a "Year of the Network". I think that it will happen just like networking did. It will move in slowly, step by step until it is all around us. These current things I have listed are just among the steps of the 2nd stage. More will be coming.
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