How long until guaranteed Win 8 support?

In the market for new laptop, but want to wait for the new gen of full Ivy bridge (opposed to the new HP Pavilion dv6/7 laptops, which from what I quickly gathered, will ship with Intel's new Panther Point chipset, they won't include the companion Ivy Bridge processors on board, suggesting that maybe Intel's silicon won't be ready by the time they launch, but could be part of yet another refresh later on. )

Q1) Has anyone any info concerning coming Dell's hardware?
a) Are they gonna pull the same thing as HP mentioned above or will they wait to release the full deal?

b) Can anyone fill me in on the latest regarding the when for next XPS?

Q2) I'm not in a huge hurry for a new laptop, would much rather wait a few months if it'll likely future proof for considerably longer....
That having been said, one of my biggest concerns/priorities is/are making 100% sure that whatever I buy will be guaranteed to support Windows 8 in future (Drivers and Firmware, ect)

--> What is the general consensus (or going on Dell's previous handling of supporting next gen Windows releases on hardware released in year prior to, that shipped with the previous Windows version)

You guys/gals think it'll be safe bet to buy Ivy Bridge XPS as soon as released and Dell will support Win 8 drivers/firmware, ect?

( I bought an Inspiron 1520 that shipped w windows vista. Dell never supported Windows 7 drivers and I have had an absolute nightmare ever since upgrading to windows 7! PiXsed me off that other models released only a few weeks later were supported with Windows 7 drivers, ect. I guess you've gotta draw a line somewhere, if you're Dell; but don't put that line in front of my overpriced $2800+ Inspiron (I was young then and didn't know laptops would become disposable during the following year )

okay thanks everybody in advance for any/all participation.
Have a bunch more questions about Ivy Bridge hardware, too, see if anyone indulges the above first.

Thanks again,
JD

 

1a) No one knows for certain, but based on rumors and leaks it seems like Dell will be releasing the XPS 15 with Ivy Bridge hardware. However, there still is the possibility that Dell will wait for Intel to ship out chips in larger quantities. Dell is expected to give more information about the XPS 15 in the coming weeks, as there isn't any official information yet.

1b) This site has all the information available about the XPS 15 refresh. There's this notebookreview thread as well.

 

Until Intel releases official info, then we shouldn't jump to conclusions. And just like the Sandy Bridge launch, people didn't have huge supplies of notebooks for months.

Windows 8 driver model I'm going to assume is very similar to Windows 7, which in turn was very similar to Vista. I see no reason there wouldn't be "full" support for Windows 8.

 

Win 8 runs fine on my nearly 4-year old desktop hardware. Should run fine on anything new now. Vista was a mess because of how the drivers were handled on release, but Win 7 never had that issue, for the couple of things on some systems that I couldn't get official Win 7 drivers for, the corresponding Vista drivers worked great

 

thanks for replies! Useful stuff, especially xps refresh links