Opinion It's been some time since The Sherriff took a cheap shot at Chipzilla's marketing goons, so we reckon they're well overdue for a slapping, as some English chums might say. What is it about Intel that it seems hell bent in confusing the world+dog at every opportunity? Not content with launching ten processors a week, Chipzilla insists on devising arcane numbering systems to ensure that no one has a clue about what CPU does what. Try going into Chips 'R' Us and asking the ten-year-old sales assistant to explain to you what the A, B and EB suffixes mean -- he won't have a clue, so what chance does the average user have? To recap: The A suffix was applied to Celerons to differentiate between the original (crap) Covington part and its Mendocino replacement. For Pentium III processors, B means it's a 133MHz FSB part. E means it's a Coppermine chip built at 0.18 micron. Put an E and a B together and get E flat -- simple. Now that's reasonably simple to understand, but Chipzilla's marketing morons obviously think we've got nothing better to do than keep pace with their processor designations, because only the 300MHz Celerons were ever given the A suffix, and only PIIIs slower than 650MHz carry either a B or an E. Intel claims that only processors with the same clock speed need to carry a suffix at all, but then rather spoils the plan by introducing the only 533MHz part as the 533B, suggesting that Chipzilla is as confused as the rest of us when it comes to processor naming. Is The Sherriff alone in thinking that all Mendocino Celerons should have an A on them, all 133MHz PIIIs should carry a B and all 0.18 micron Cumines should be branded with an E? When a Coppermine Celeron appears, it would be called a Celeron E and a 133MHz FSB version would be a Celeron EB. Instead we will see the Celeron III and presumably if it gets launched at the same speed as an old Celeron, it'll have to have yet another letter tagged on to avoid any confusion. Maybe we should apply a series of suffixes to Intel's marketing department -- how about I, T, H and S (but not necessarily in that order)? ®