All but the cpufreq applet part is possible with Gnome Shell Extensions and I am pretty sure there is actually an extension out there for cpufreq that I just haven't found useful yet.
Here you go: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/47/cpu-frequency/
Eh? File manager Undo/Redo is a feature in GNOME 3.4 that they've back ported.
That said, one of the issues with prompting the shift to Gnome 3 was that the code base for Gnome 2 was unwieldy. Hopefully, they will be able to maintain it.
It was that GTK+ 2.x code was becoming unwieldly and so GTK+ 3.x started a big cleanup. That principle may have also applied to some other individual packages. But the desktop as a whole wasn't really in that position.
The Undo/Redo file manager functionality was backported from GNOME 3. Good for them for merging new features from GNOME 3, but it's not like they developed the feature.
Yes, the Eschede ICE accident happened on normal tracks.
Work continues in this area. -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton