will any new processors come out in the next 7+ months? any price drops or increase in hard drive space for ones with 7200rpm?

I'm debating whether or not to purchase a notebook now. Some main concerns to me are:

1. Will there be any new processors coming out in the next 7+ months?
2. Will there be an increase in the capacity of hard drives with 7200rpm or a significant price drop ($50 or more) in the next 7+ months?

I don't really need a new notebook now and the processor isn't that important to me. However, I do need the biggest hard drive available at 7200rpm.

 

there will be as it is a contineous process unlike OS.

Don't buy if you don't need now as the whole industry is kind of observing Moore's Law. Some said even more so in the HDD industry.

The only oddity right now is RAM price which seems to suffer a bit of glut driving its price abnormally low.

 

i'm pretty sure intel is planning to have price cuts around late july/august, in preparation for amd's barcelona release. from what i've read, it should be around 20-30% drop in price.

 

Do you have any links to articles? Looking for (semi) specific dates

 

200GB 7200rpm HDDs are coming off the production lines at Hitachi and Samsung (and maybe others). Prices will go down as availability goes up. 250GB 5400rpm drives (which are currently shipping) give very similar data transfer rates but have slightly longer access times.

I'm not sure when the next size increment will come.

John

 

Intel Penryn is a new laptop and notebook CPU that Intel said will come out this year. It will be intruduced first as a Santa Rosa upgrade where only the CPU changes and the chipset stays the same. And in the 1st Q 2008 a new chipset and next generation centrino will come out.

 

Intel Core 2 Extreme 2.6ghz is coming out late July and a 2.8ghz in September/October i think.

 

Yes, new processors are coming out this summer. See this post for more info:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3777

 

well the extreme is pretty costly, seeing as the base price for a notebook with it will be about $2000

if i have a 7200rpm hard drive, 4gig of ram, and a 2.6ghz processor should it lag at all?

also will there be any new video cards coming out for the notebook in the upcoming months?

 

Those specifications sound excessive. Save some money and get the 2.0GHz or 2.2GHz (T7300 or T7500) processor. Don't rule out the AMD Turion X2 processors either; they are a great value. The 2.0GHz TL-60 and 2.2GHz TL-64 are decent.
4GB of RAM is actually reasonably priced these days; check the RAM DEALS thread.

Yes there will be new video cards, mainly from Nvidia. The 8700M-GT should appear in notebooks sometime between July and August, and the top-end 8800M toward the end of the year. There are no set dates.

 

Never buy technology until you absolutely needed it as CPU and GPU will always get faster, HD will always get bigger, LCD would look better or run on less power. So basically if you don't need it this minute, than don't buy it now.