Virginia Tech’s no stranger to housing supercomputers — those folks strung together 324 Mac Pros back in 2008 just for kicks, giggles and “research” — but their latest computing monolith is quite the shift from the ordinary. A cool $2 million is floating over to Blacksburg in order to create HokieSpeed, a “versatile new supercomputing instrument” that’ll soon be primed and ready to handle not just one or two tasks, but a variety of disciplines. Wu Feng, associate professor of computer science at the university, calls this magnificent monster a “new heterogeneous supercomputing instrument based on a combination of central processing units (CPUs) and graphical processing units (GPUs),” with expected performance to be orders of magnitude higher than their previous claim to fame, System X.

It’s still not as widely available as we would like, but Nikon’s D3S has finally moved from “this thing simply has to be vaporware ” to “I may catch one in stock if I stay up all night clicking around.” Without a doubt, it’s one of the most impressive leaps in digital imaging at the $5k DSLR level that we’ve ever seen, and it has become next to essential when dealing with tragic lighting conditions on trade show floors. But as with every gem, there’s a flaw or two be found somewhere. For those who plunked down thousands to bring home Nikon’s low light monster, how would you change things if given the opportunity?

The 11.6″ display will be LED backlit and have a 1366×768 resolution. It will weigh just 3.08 lbs and manages about five and a half hours of runtime on the standard 6-cell battery. It will offer Bluetooth, 802.11n and both VGA and HDMI

The ASUS Eee PC is a 12.1″ “netbook” with a 1366×768 HD resolution, and HDMI for exporting 1080p out. It will include advanced hardware such as a 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 CPU, NVIDIA Optimus switching between the integrated graphics and Ion discrete graphics, 250-320GB HDD plus 500GB ASUS WebStorage, and Bluetooth 3.0/USB 3.0 connectivity.

The Samsung N230 will be available with either Intel’s Atom N450 or Atom N470 CPU. It will be very lightweight at under 1kg, and thin as well at under 1″. Battery life will also be geared towards portability, with 7 hours available via the standard battery and just under 14 available with extended options.

The Maingear eX-L 17 has a 17″ 1080p display, and comes with CPUs from Intel Core i5 to Core i7-quad. Graphics cards range from a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon 5870 to 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX480M or NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M, RAM is available up to 8GB, and for storage you can choose form up to a 750GB HDD or 512MB SSD.

All Timeline X laptops are housed in brushed black aluminum and measure at less than 1″ thick, while weighing between just 3-5.5lbs. The 5.5lb, 15.6-inch Aspire 5820T and 4.65lb, 14-inch Aspire 4820T both come with integrated optical drives, Core i3-i5 CPUs, 320GB-500GB HDDs, and 4GB RAM. Both start at $749.99.

Popular retailers such as Best Buy and Fry’s have begun selling Sony VAIO laptops powered by AMD processors like the AMD Athlon II X2. Two notable such laptops are the 15.5″ (1366 x 768) Sony VAIO EE, which includes 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD, and the 17.3″ (1600×900) Sony VAIO EF, which includes 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD. These devices are less expensive than their Intel counterparts, and are priced at $650 and $720, respectively

The AO721 is an LED-backlit 11.6″ netbook and comes with 2GB DDR3 RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium. It weighs about 3lbs. The AO521 is a similarly LED-backlit 10.1″ netbook with 1GB RAM and Windows 7 SE, weighing only 2.75lbs

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y560d will make use of TriDef’s 3D technology, which means there will be a special coating on the screen that can convert 2D images to 3D with the help of software and glasses. It will also be available with up to a Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 1GB ATI Radeon HD5730 GPU. Other interesting features include Lenovo’s RapidDrive technology, which combines SSD/HHD options to deliver improved performance