Ah, but someone named "Linley" at Microprocessor Report thinks different.
http://www.chipanalyst.com/q/mpr/editorials/edit12_10.html
They claim that Merced could be even later because of serious design
process problems, and that Intel is already quietly backpeddling and
saying that maybe Merced may be a turkey, but the second version
they're working on (McKinley) will be just dandy.
I don't know if it's true or not, but it's interesting. You might want
to check out the Slashdot commentary, it's as useful as it usually is:
http://slashdot.org/articles/980805/090222.shtml