1.   American companies have built the fastest computers for most of the past decade.

2.   And that could be a hard case to make in a high-technology industry where the fastest computers are now sometimes among the least expensive.

3.   Customers who want the fastest computer will cheerfully pay a bit more to get it, they argue.

4.   In April, a Japanese weather supercomputer took the title of fastest computer, formerly held by U.S. military machines.

5.   In the long run, it makes sense to buy the fastest computer with the most memory you can afford.

6.   It is considered the fastest portable computer.

7.   On Monday, an electrical fire knocked the fastest computer at the National Centers for Environment Prediction in Washington, D.C., out of commission.

8.   Sometime this month, the fastest computer in the world will boot up.

9.   Supercomputers are the fastest computers available, performing tens of billions of calculations a second.

10.   Supercomputer makers had hoped that they would convince corporations that the fastest computers could solve their engineering problems and save them money.