According to Gizmodo, Intel is due to launch the next generation Centrino mobile platform, known as Calpella at the end of September. This will support the mobile version of the Core i7 processor. They mention three different new processors, including the Core i7 7200M, Core i7 8200M, and Core i7 920XM.

Any of these should give a huge increase in performance over the Penryn based Core2 Duo processors (such as the T8xxx and T9xxx series) processors that are in the higher-end notebooks right now. I would guess that the chipset in Calpella will also support DDR3 memory.

The new G2 version of the Intel X-25M SSD should be widely available by then also, for about $225 for the 80GB version. If you were to buy a new notebook with two 2.5” drive bays, you could put the OS on the SSD and then use a 7200rpm 500GB SATA drive for storage. Windows 7 supports the TRIM command for SSDs, so you would have an extremely fast system that would not have the deteriorating performance issue that some early SSDs have run into.