An lame processor made by Intel. It was supposed to be
Intel's answer to AMD and
Cyrix in the low-end and midrange section of the pc market.
The Celeron was designed to be as cheap as possible. Not only in terms of production, but also in terms of design. So, instead of creating an all-new design that would actually compete, Intel just chopped parts of their
Pentium II processor, until the desired level of
cheapness had been achieved. The first Celeron to be rolled out was the 300A, and it quickly gained reputation for it's lackster performance,
increadible lag, and general lameness.
During the height of their (un)popularity in the early 2000s, Celerons became the laughing stock of every tech-savvy person. Like AOL, they quickly became a product for people who didn't know any better. Today,
Celeron's continue the tradition of being nothing more than chopped versions of Intel's processors, but fortunately people have
wisen up and look at the
benchmarks before they buy, so naturally, their population has drammatically decreased in favor of AMD, again.
Nevertheless, Celerons can still be found in office desks, as they are notorious for being able to tolerate incredible amounts of dust, nicotine and filth without breaking down, while being adequate in word-processing tasks and the like.