Yes, I understand that except that I didn't know that trick with release cycles. However, what i'm frequently seeing is 1.8ghz dual core processors being sold with new laptops. That puts them at about the same practical performance as my year old laptop. Sure, my laptop (Latitude D610) was expensive and highly speced but most of that actually goes into the build-quality and durability. So you'd expect "home" laptops now to be better than what I bought as a "buisiness" laptop 1 year ago.
Intel now as a xeon eight core and the quad core. The xeon runs better for cad, rendering and engineering work.