which proccessor to wait for?

So when i finally made my mind up to wait for intel's santa rosa i found out they are working on proccessors to follow it. which on will be the one to wait for?

 

How long are you willing to wait? they will always be working on a cpu, so just buy what you need, when you need to. I personally will buy my next notebook when santa rosa comes out, but that is becasue I just purchased a notebook over the summer.

 

Ya know what...trying to stay ahead of the technology curve will only be a painful and stressful process. The best thing to do is wait until your current notebook can't do that new thing that you REALLY need or want...then upgrade then and there.

Waiting around for the "next thing around the corner" will only be just that -- waiting, never buying.

That being said, what do you have right now? What do you want to do with a new laptop? Out of that list (of what you want to do), which items can your current machine NOT do? Maybe we can help you more if you post the FAQs as well as what you have now!

 

My old notebook still worked, it was just 3 years old, so it was time for an upgrade

But I agree with night_2004: Just get the best of what you can at the moment, that does what you want. Otherwise you'll always be waiting.

 

There is no such animal as 'waiting' when we're talking about high technologies...

 

What are you talking about? You're ALWAYS waiting on the "next big thing" in high tech, Dreamer. Waiting on the 7950 to come out, waiting on Santa Rosa, not just going with a 7900 and a Napa/Merom combination right now, because they'll be outpaced "soon".

 

As always, don't wait for "the" CPU, motherboard or anything else.

Sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, and write down what you need from your next computer.

For example, I want:
- Good battery life
- Good resolution (1280 or above)
- Thin and light
- Feature-heavy (A GPU with SM3.0, 64-bit support) - For programming purposes.

On the other hand, I'm willing to sacrifice a lot of performance (I've got a fast desktop system, but when away from home I just want something I can work on, even if it's slower)
And I can accept a steep price as well. (Can buy it through work which cuts down a lot on the price)

And that's it. What does Santa Rosa offer me that I can't already get? True, it has a SM3.0-capable onboard GPU (which is rumoured to be slow and buggy), and the entire chipset is said to be horribly power-hungry. But even disregarding these rumours, it doesn't offer anything new from my above list. I can already get SM3.0 GPU's on a notebook, for example.
So sure, if Santa Rosa was launched tomorrow, I'd consider it, but it's not something I need to *wait* for.

The same applies for any hardware upgrade. Find out which exact features you *need*, and wait for them to become available.
Don't just wait because "something better will be available later". Something better is always around the corner, no point in waiting for that.

 

Yeah Jalf has an algorithm for everything... (you can write an expert system) ...

Pitabred if you waste your life in waiting... that's just your problem

 

Instead of waiting you could just do like what i do which is pretty much buy a new laptop every time something new and better comes out that i like when i can get it for a good price. I rarely ever overpay for something but i upgrade a lot. Usually when i buy a laptop i get in on a hot deal or at least a pretty good deal and then i can resale the laptop a few months to a year down the road for not much less then i paid for it new. The upgrade game is starting to get a little old for me at this point though as I'm more focused on other things and i don't play games on my laptop so usually a lot of the performance just goes to waste. If you're ready for a new laptop then don't wait for Santa Rosa, just buy something now. Manufacturers like Intel and AMD aren't going to just stop working on the next greatest innovation in hardware once they finally release something new. They are a company and as a company they are constantly moving forward in technology and Intel is already working on something newer and better than Santa Rosa before it is even available. Sometimes technology is a few years in the making and you never know when it is coming out.

 

Dreamer: I don't think you understand English too well. I took from your post that there is no such animal as waiting in the high tech game to mean that you never wait in high tech. The problem is that if you want the absolute best stuff that's been announced, then you're ALWAYS waiting, becuase they ALWAYS announce new stuff while the current chips and so on are shipping.

My point was that you could be waiting on Santa Rosa, a Go7950, Vista, DX10 cards, etc., forever, or you can just buy what you can afford that will do what you want now, and actually have something, rather than continually waiting on the next "must-have" upgrade and never getting anything.

Notice my sig? I just bought a new laptop, it should be arriving soon, because I wanted an upgrade from my old machine. I was buying right as Core 2 Duo's came out, so I waited a little bit to get one of those (if I'm buying new and it's out, no reason not to), but I'm not waiting on Santa Rosa or anything else, because it was time to get it now.

 

Pitabred I don't think you understand English too well.

I never wait for anything...

You will never get the absolute best stuff ... so waiting is pointless...just get what you need and what you can at the moment...

and yes I repeat "There is no such animal as 'waiting' when we're talking about high technologies..." otherwise it would be never ending story

 

Wait for Santa Rosa, and if reviews are bad, buy something else. But do wait to see what Santa Rosa is like, as it should offer a good bit memory bandwidth for your lappy and thus a good bit more performance in a number of areas if you use your machine for high-end sorts of things.

 

I am not sure what I will buy next, or if I am really waiting for anything right now. The reason is, my notebook does everything I ask of it reasonably well, including the latest games. So, I see no need to upgrade - I want to, but I won't because it getting a Core 2 Duo won't help me be any more productive than I am right now.
I have used several T7600 2.33GHz top-of-the-line Meroms already, and for my normal tasks there was hardly a difference between it and my 1.86GHz Pentium M.

Get what you need, when you need it.

 

I got what I want, when I wanted it, but I was lucky. I wanted a Merom processor and GenTech was one of the few resellers to have them in August (ES's). Otherwise I'd still been waiting to this day.

But if it was only a few days or a week, I'd waited to get a Merom in place of a Yonah

 

Yeah i understand what u all are saying. I have an hp nc6000 with a 1600mhz pentium m processor right now. It has 1.5 gigs of ram and a o40 gig hardrive. I am oing of to college and i know i need a new hardrive so thats what promted me looking at new computers. My laptop does most things that I want now but i figured a jump to a core 2 would be a noticable differene. I would also like better battery performance. Thanks for the advice

 

Well, if you want to get another year or so out of your laptop, putting in that faster hard drive isn't a bad idea. An 80GB 7200RPM drive is relatively affordable. Also, follow out tune-up guide here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787
Should help noticeably.

 

I'd recommend a bigger 5400 rpm HDD like
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822149030
while a 7200 drive is faster, it wont effect performance that much in real life use.


If you spend $95 on this HDD, then you should be good for another year; when you can buy even better laptops.
This about it this way. Say you buy a modest $900 laptop, and it lasts for 3 years, then you have effectively paid $300/year for laptop use. If a newer HDD can get you an extra year, then go for it as $95<< $300