"I" has load of connotations Idiot, Imbecile, Ignorant, Immature, Irrational, Impulsive, Intermittent, Incomprehensible, Inconclusive, Ironic, and the ever popular Illogical (Mr. Spock).
I7 Inherently means the 7th generation cpus.. along the lines of a 786 model.. 8086,8286,8386,8486,8586(pentium),8686, now 8786.. But along similar features, power, and mhz specs as the 6th generation processor (core-2's)
Thanks to AMD, the Pentium line-up had a vast run of success. Multi-Core & multithreading computing on a single chip was not needed by most home consumers (until recently). On mhz note, we're talking about computers beginning in the 4.4ghz native mode (2x 2.2ghz) going all the way up to 6.6 (4x2.4ghz) and beyond overclocked/extreme cooled & tweaked. The next level of performance increases will be when a single chip (quad core extreme) breaks into the 10-12ghz native mode not overclocked with no heat issues (3.33ghz to 4ghz per core--much in the same way hard drives now have 333-375gb per platter hard drives).
However, the top of the line chips will be mighty expensive if AMD doesn't come out with some blockbuster competitive chips. Even though these kinds of chips are in the R&D pipeline, the economy has got Intel & Amd looking much like GM & Ford.