One of the most active topics in ultrafast technology is the progress from very complex and expensive systems towards simpler, cost-efficient, and reliable systems. An outstanding area in ultrafast science are optical frequency combs, which have been revolutionizing numerous fields in metrology and spectroscopy. Nevertheless, most comb systems are still relatively complex, expensive, and usually restricted to emission wavelengths in the visible and near infrared spectral regions. We will discuss new trends and research directions for real-world comb solutions. Another important direction is the increase of the achievable power levels of femtosecond laser systems. The ultrafast thin-disk laser (TDL) technology has been particularly successful in the last years. The thin gain medium provides excellent heat removal capabilities, low nonlinearity and power-scalability, which makes it ideally suited for ultrafast operation. We will give an overview on power-scaling and comb stabilization of ultrafast TDL oscillators. Such ultrafast TDL oscillators also enable extremely high intracavity peak and average power levels, which are suitable for driving intracavity high harmonic generation.