Practically speaking it had little effect, but as a college student in CS during the trial it helped to solidify a very negative impression of Microsoft. The c

Practically speaking it had little effect, but as a college student in CS during the trial it helped to solidify a very negative impression of Microsoft. The cool technologies at the time were not coming out of Redmond. UNIX/Linux, Java, and web technologies were the hot things to learn. It took a long time for Microsoft to try to earn back the trust of developers.