Right now is the worst time to buy a new laptop

It's always the worst time to buy technology hardware. Just go ahead and buy if you need something and don't look at the adverts for a few months so you don't kick yourself silly for not waiting for the all the shinier toys that come out immediately after your purchase.

If you're looking for power with 7-8 hours of battery life, checkout the Y570 from Lenovo. Seems like this "aspiring IT professional" needs to do a LOT more research than just checking out whatever new macbook is out. I spent $700 on my laptop, and put a 120GB SSD in for another $100 and I do have the 8 hours of battery life and instant wake up (arguably almost instant boot as well, it only takes ~10 seconds). I don't disagree that laptops aren't about to get better (ivey bridge is going to be huge), but they're always getting better.

You can already get 8-hour-plus laptop battery life, with plenty more options than just the mentioned Y570. This is at all ranges of size from 12" to 15". Wake-up from sleep is easily under 4-5 seconds, the cooling fans are not obnoxious.

Better reasons this is the worst time to get a laptop: hard drive shortages, the coming Ivy Bridge laptops, and of course, almost everything has already moved over to 16:9 screens :)