Pretty much "came back" to post just to join in on the hype and conversation with you mates here. Been mostly VERY silent and lurking whilst not logged in.
On-topic:
Let's see what Gateway brings to us, yeah? Keeping on with the speculation, I'm keen in believing that Gateway warns people to not advance beyond 4.5 for the sole fact of commodity. As someone said earlier in the thread "why fix what isn't broken?" It's not like Nintendo's firmware upgrades did wonders and marvels anyways.
But someone here also raised a good point when mentioning the patching Nintendo made for firmwares above so.. Those exploits won't work anymore.. So.. What gives? I'm confident Gateway's team is more than capable of doing a better job that the Sky3DS team. Not trying to throw any punches here, just putting a bit more faith than usual in them.
Also, I'm a firm believer in thinking that Gateway already had this move planned for quite some time. They just waited for the right opportunity to do so. What better way to announce it than 3 days after a competing flashcard arose with a solution to (apparently) one of Gateway's problems? It's just marketing genius. Furthermore, even without a deadline, they did announce they're in the final stages of developing that new update so.. A beta will come up soon for "whomever" wants to test it, and a public patch soon afterwards.
All in all, I just hope gateway becomes region-free, even with support for the new firmware. These are indeed exciting times, and a whole slew of people will be joining us soon enough.