Pretty good analysis Danger, except that new microprocessor designs probably aren't going to fare any better than Transmeta has. And although your point is well taken about how Intel is in no way guaranteed a long life in big iron, it really is more at shot at HP who will soon be locked into Intel, not Sun, who has no intention of scraping Sparc.
I don't really know how Transmeta is doing. The ARM design (an embedded 32-bit RISC mfg'd under license by many) is in some huge percentage of phones, PDA's, etc. Unit shipment of ARM chips were 400 million in 2000; it's around 700 million per year now. Anything that gets made in quantity 700 million gets very, very, cheap.