Java GUIS can be good looking

Yep - they can be.
Swing has suffered too much from bad publicity.., albeit sometimes justified.
With the advent of 6u10, performance improvement with 2D, and so on, I dare to say what Java on the desktop competes with C# WinForms easily.

Check out some NetBeans Based-GUIs... and a great framework for Java GUIs: Jide.

Check this post as well (demo at the bottom)

Instrumentarix II

For my new version of Instrumentarix, I am thinking about using another set of technologies...ok, the first version was done with Java Swing - pure 100% Java swing app. I also used MyDoggy - looks nice, but came across some subtle bugs that are really annoying...

Taking my experience of version I into account, I am thinking about going for NetBeans RCP, Eclipse RCP, or even re-write it in Swing but using Jide and make it Open Source. Microsoft CAB is a no-go, because it only runs on Windows....

What I would like to do is to simplify the plug-in api, make use of my new SuperGrid and use Flamingo.

Jeez - I do not know. What would you go for?

Java Parallel Processing

Check out JPPF

NetBeans 6.5 Docking Framework

My wish would be to have the docking framework as a separate project.
That would be fantastic.