The Vaio Z is Sony's sculpted little reminder that companies besides Apple can make exciting laptops too.

This slim, MacBook Air-like laptop may only be destined for Europe, but it has a clever trick up its sleeve. Cramming its Blu-ray drive inside the power media dock, the two devices are linked to one another by high-speed Thunderbolt.

Along with snappy Sandy Bridge processors and beefy GPUs, Apple's new MacBook Pros have a superfast, versatile new I/O tech called Thunderbolt. Whazat?

Apple's Thunderbolt connector has shown up in a supposed leaked pic of the new MacBook Pro, which we could see as early as tomorrow. While it looks just like a Mini DisplayPort connector, it could actually be Intel's Light Peak behind the lightning bolt icon.

CNET reports that Intel's Light Peak, a high-speed connection standard capable of transferring data at 10 gigabits per second, will be arriving sooner than expected: sometime in the first half of 2011. And Apple's poised to be an early adopter.

According to a major Light Peak provider's plans, products with the ultrafast connectivity standard may arrive as soon as early 2010. Apple helped in its development. Apple is rumored to adopt it first. Yes, you know where this is going.

Engadget has it on very good authority that there's a legitimate reason for the odd appearance of a Hackintosh at IDF last week: Apple was actually the catalyst for Light Peak and is working closely with Intel on the project.

Check out the machine Intel used to demo their insanely fast 10Gbps Light Peak optical data transfer tech at IDF: Yep, a hulking freak of a Hackintosh—the only thing that's more awesome than a super teeny tiny Hackintosh.

Today at IDF, Intel unveiled Light Peak technology, a plan for an extremely high-speed optical cable they hope will land on consumer products in 2010. Imagine transferring an entire Blu-Ray disk in 30 seconds. And that's just the beginning.