Anyone know when will the 4th Generation Intel "Haswell" Processors be released for laptops in retail stores? My friend's 5 year laptop died and she was wondering if she should buy a new machine with the 3rd gen processors or wait it out?

Is there a huge performance/battery life boost with these new chips??

Impressive battery life boost for the new generation. In terms of performance, not so much. Should be released relatively soon.

As industry approaches the limit of the current technology, you should expect exponential increase in wait time between generations.

Haswell:
-extremely small performance increase in CPU performance.
-very large increase in integrated GPU performance (40% increase).
-much, much better battery life.

The biggest difference is battery life. Many sites tout a 60% increase in battery life over the next previous model. That id for example a 3 hour battery improvement on a previously 5 hour computer (to 8 hours).