Yeah, seems like the long pipeline, crazy high MHz thing is losing out to the shorter pipelines.
Personally, I think Intel made a mistake with the P4 design, and a LOT of what they are doing now is a cover for being able to switch back
Part one is switching to processor numbers to hide the MHz. Eventually I bet they change back to something more like the Pentium M / PIII design for their desktop processors. As has been said, pretty much all other processors have found a shorter pipleine to be the sweet spot, I find it unlikely Intel will end up at a significantly different place.
In other words:
5.0 GHz processor prediction = 2007 or later.