Analysts who watch big industry are always getting hot under the collar when talk of mergers between companies gets going. Most of the time it's just flannel, but once in a while such speculation warrants closer attention.

Such is the case with the merger talks under way between Internet giant, AOL, and UK broadband champions, NTL.

The story is that AOL have become increasingly frustrated with their current telco 'partner', BT, and the extremely slow roll-out of its ADSL service. And who can blame them for that? As anyone who has tried to order the installation of ADSL will know, the wait just goes on and on, while NTL merrily connects people to a broadband Internet via cable by the thousand.

AOL is the biggest provider of Internet services to individuals in the UK and the world. They recently did an enormous deal with Time Warner and must be exceptionally keen to show off the fantastic new content that the deal gave them.

However, their future will start to look less bright if they cannot offer subscribers some easy, hassle-free means by which to join the high-speed revolution to enjoy their new content.

Any merger between the two companies would also benefit NTL greatly, who would be able to offer a whole range of new content to its customers. Not to mention the fact that NTL, while managing to avoid the adverse publicity of its rival BT, is also weighed down in debt - though not quite at the same level as BT, which owes more money than many developed countries.

The whole content and connection thing is still a very big deal in the Internet industry, so potential deals like this are very much worth keeping an eye on. Well, it is probably the most predictable story to have risen its head over the past week, but there is now speculation that Microsoft could miss the target release date for the latest version of its operating system (OS), Windows XP.

XP is the OS that finally brings together the stability of the 'serious', traditionally business-based Windows NT or 2000 with the ease of use and generally simpler Windows 98 or ME. I've seen XP running and have used it in a test environment for some time. So far I'm not greatly impressed with it. This could be because I've only had the opportunity to use the Personal edition of the software which is just too simplified and feature-stripped for someone who likes to get into the heart of an OS.

Naturally, there is to be a Professional version of XP and this may well suit my needs more, although, to be honest, I love Windows 2000 and have barely had a single problem with it in all the time it has been on my machine.

Add to the delay problems the fact that XP requires an absolute monster of a system to run smoothly and Microsoft may finally have pushed us all a little to hard to keep changing our operating system.