Symantec, Opera and Microsoft caught the attention of Mack-Line last week with some announcements that on one hand perplexed and on the other delighted.
Symantec, the maker of Norton online security products, released its Online Living Report, which for the first time included supplementary questions asked of New Zealanders.
Some interesting findings from the New Zealand survey showed up in parental controls for internet use.
Nearly 80% of New Zealand online parents have spoken to their child or children about practising safe online habits.
This does not, I hasten to add, include Mack-line who, in the absence of seeing his son in person, has resorted to leaving cryptic messages on Facebook.
The comments seem to have delighted the friends of my son who have added their little comments of support or otherwise.
Back to the report, which showed 50% of New Zealand online parents had set parental controls on their family computer and 57% of online adults had checked or monitored their child or children's online usage (reading their email or tracking the websites they had visited).
Would not we all love to track the websites our children were visiting, except we might be surprised at the results.
I am, of course, talking about children in their 20s, who are adults but you know how it goes.
Here is where the research got interesting and Mack-line can totally relate - New Zealand adults spend an average of three hours a week texting, above the global adult average of 2.4 hours per week.
With a new Telecom XT phone to trial, texting, email access and updating Facebook can be done easily and quickly and I can guarantee other people are finding it just as easy and as fast as Mack-Line.
Microsoft sent down a Windows 7 release candidate for Mack-Line to trial.
The download from the site was working well but the DVD from Microsoft was worth checking out.
Then, the news came that the system will be generally available on October 22 and if Microsoft keeps to form, New Zealand will be the first country in the world to buy PCs or laptops with the new system in place.
This is exciting stuff.
Mack-Line never really came to grips with Vista and a recent meltdown of a personal lap-top saw the reinstall of Windows XP Professional, somehow, instead of Vista.
I have been too scared to ask anyone why.
The arrival of the new system is a big event for the computing world, as more than 90% of the world's PC's run on Windows, and strategically important for Microsoft, which gets more than half of its profit from its operating system unit.
The latest release is crucial to win back public confidence after the disappointing launch of Vista in 2007.
Vista was incompatible with some low-power machines and perceived by many to be too complicated.
The world's largest software company also faces new threats to its dominance in operating systems, especially in the fast-growing "netbook" market for small, portable PCs ideal for surfing the internet and sending email.
Earlier, netbook pioneer Acer Inc said it plans to sell small PCs that run on Google's new Android operating system, making it the first manufacturer to do so.
Microsoft said it will send Windows 7 code to PC makers to load on to new machines - known in the industry as "release to manufacturing" - around the end of July.
Other exciting news was that Norway's Opera Software overtook Apple's iPhone browser in May as the most popular mobile browser in the world, web analytics firm StatCounter said.
Of all internet pages that were downloaded to mobile devices globally in May, 24.6% were downloaded through Opera's browser and 22.3% to Apple's, StatCounter said.
The top spot has see-sawed this year.
"Opera began the year in the No 1 slot but iPhone overtook it in February," Aodhan Cullen, chief executive of StatCounter, said in a statement.
"It will be fascinating to watch how this battle plays out over the year."
Opera sells its browser to many cellphone makers and operators, and consumers can directly download it for free, while the Apple browser's ranking reflects only iPhone users surfing the internet.
Nokia, the world's top cellphone maker, retained third place in mobile browsers with 17.9% of the market, StatCounter said.
StatCounter said its research data is based on four billion pages loaded per month.
Mack-Line has a soft spot for Opera although, at present, the Nokia browser is firmly installed on the phone.
The Symantec survey showed that globally, online adults spend an average of 23.6 hours per week on the internet.
In New Zealand, the online average of adults is only 12.7 hours per week.
With the new Microsoft 7 and a new phone to play with, Mack-Line's average is sure to rise.
