Worth waiting for Ivy Bridge?

Says pretty much everything in the title.
Is it worth waiting for? Or should I just get a laptop now?
Will there be a sizable price jump when they come out?

 

Ivy Bridge will bring considerable power efficiency so if you want a long battery life you should wait. If you sit at a desk all day and you really need a computer now, go for Sandy Bridge.

 

if you already have a laptop of some sort, a sandy bridge one then no its not worth it. But if you got nothing now? then wait, it will arrive sooner than you think.

 

Basically this is my position:
I am an undergrad Computer Science major, I have a nice desktop that I do most my computing on (like type this), I have a CR48 (the beta Chromebook) that I use for taking notes at school. I want to spend a good chunk of change on a desktop replacement or similar that will last me the next few years (until I start needing a machine for CAD and VMWare and the like.) I plan on doing heavy computing on it at school, but it only NEEDS to last 2-3 hours on a single charge, but if Ivy Bridge offers an extra hour or two it may be worth waiting.

 

Hm...
SB laptops already can get well over 3 hours on battery if I'm not mistaken, even with dedicated gpu's inside.
But such a battery charge would predominantly rely on the user doing light stuff (Word, web browsing, etc).
Doing heavy CAD based programs on battery could drain it relatively quickly - don't know exact numbers here though, but at the same time, I think that your 2-3 hours mark would be ok even for such a work (I could be mistaken though).

What exactly do you expect to do with the laptop while on battery?

IB will indeed bring extra power optimization and on those grounds alone it might be worth waiting for (but performance wise, we're talking about a relative 15% increase at most on raw cpu power and that's not really something worth waiting for - power efficiency on the other hand, yes)

Price-wise, IB systems should be on the same level as SB laptops.

 

I would wait since it will release in < 3 months. We should see better design looking at some of the laptops/ultrabooks shown in CES.

Unfortunately Win 8 is still quite far way. Otherwise a laptop like Lenovo Yoga looks really attractive.

 

Mostly take notes and program simple programs, anything heavy duty and I would be plugged in I am sure.

 

Unless it gets delayed.

Anyway... if you need a laptop now, then you won't regret going for a decent SB laptop.
But yes, if you can wait until IB is released (which is only a few months away), then do so.

 

i get over 4 hrs on battery right now if i switch to integrated Intel Graphics. I get this doing light things like surfing the net etc.

If you can wait, wait, however, if you are itching to buy, battery life is no longer an issue even with power hungry specs like mine

 

you dont wait for something that will eventually come out. If you need laptop now - go and buy one. Maybe give couple days in research of which one to pick but that's it.

if you get on the wagon of waiting, you'll never buy. Because lets say after Ivy Bridge comes out, the next one could be called "Collapsed Bridge" and will be N-times faster so you'll have to wait again ... lol.

 

what do you define as 'heavy-duty'? Unless you're compiling something like the Chromium project, CS/SE students don't need fast systems -we only think we do cause we're usually gamers/hardware nerds.

 

Believe me, I know there is always something coming up, and I honestly don't care about Ivy Bridge having better throughput, I am just thinking about heat, weight, and (mostly) battery life, and whether that is worth waiting the 2-3 months, or the possible price bump.

Hardest stuff I will run on it will be CAD, Virtual Machines, that kind of thing, any actual compiling I will just send off to the schools supercomputer. I am buying this part for play part for school.