Lenovo y500 - wait for Haswell or buy now?

As the title says - is it worth waiting for Haswell or buying now?

The current sale ends on May 1 ($300 off the high end model, which I'm interested in). Its a great deal for the performance you get, but the one thing that irks me is the battery life.

I realize that Haswell alone will not solve the issue - the problem is that the y500's integrated graphics are disabled. Even if just running with a single gpu on battery power optimus won't kick in. This means that even with Haswell battery life won't change if optimus continues to be a non-option.

However, if the situation changes with Haswell (optimus enabled for single gpu usage on battery power, for instance) then the one major flaw of the laptop disappears. Does anyone know if that is likely?

Also, the laptop is currently backordered until mid-May. Haswell's public release is June. If I get the laptop and Lenovo changes the y500 to enable optimus, does anyone know if they would let me exchange my model for the new one?

Thanks!

 

Optimus was disabled as a result of SLI, so as long as Lenovo continues to use SLI they will continue to disable Optimus. If they enable Optimus for Haswell why couldn't they do it for Ivy Bridge?

 

Nope. Don't bother waiting for Haswell. It is irrelevant for Lenovo Y400 / Y500 owners.

Here is why:

1) Haswell offers lower power consumption. This will benefit something like a super-slim ultrabook, where CPU power consumption is a decent portion of the laptop's overall power draw. On a Lenovo Y400 / Y500, the CPU power consumption is almost inconsequential because of the high power draw of the other components in the system (large, high-res display, 2x GPUs in SLI that are always on).

2) Haswell offers better integrated graphics performance. This is irrelevant for a Lenovo Y400 / Y500 owner, because the entire reason we buy this model of laptop is because of its ability to support 2x GeForce 650M / 750M GPUs in an SLI configuration.

3) It will take several months for Haswell to release (especially after recently announced delays due to USB 3.0 and CPU power-state bugs), and then several additional months after that for laptops to start appearing with Haswell-based CPUs in them.

If you're considering buying a Lenovo Y400 / Y500, do not delay your buying decision on behalf of Haswell. Haswell will be irrelevant to you.

That's the trade-off you make with any laptop you buy.

• Price
• Performance
• Portability

Pick any 2 of the 3.

Nope. Don't hold your breath.

Again, don't hold your breath. If you buy a Lenovo Y500 today, and Optimus support was retroactively added via driver updates, then it would be a GIFT that existing laptop owners get that benefit.

It is also entirely likely that even if the problem is just as simple as updating a driver, that Intel or nVidia would allow it to only apply to new products using new CPU / GPU parts (and not retroactively give Optimus support to existing laptop owners). Again, if existing owners get Optimus support, it's a GIFT. The law of buying technology is that you buy a product based on what it can do today, not what it potentially promises to do in the future.

As for exchanging hardware models... if you buy a 2013 car today, can you bring it back to the car dealer in 7 months to exchange it for the 2014 model?