Your Conroe based Celeron have much more horsepower than the Atom on my netbook. Im able to use it very efficiently for everyday tasks. If you plan to process large images or video you will find it much slower than one of its big brothers. I would keep an eye out for motherboard CPU combos that use the same speed memory. You may find an unbelievable deal a few years from now. For everyday use web browsing writing email and viewing photos it should be pretty quick.

Try Xbench http://www.xbench.com/ They have an excellent test program. Try it both on your iMac and your budget rig.

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MOBO: Z77MX-QUO-AOS CPU: Core i7 3770K GPU: MSI N760 TF 2GD5/OC Case: Modded MacPro2,1
Memory: 32GB Corsair Vengeance (CMY32GX3M4A1600C9) Wifi: Airport Extreme bcm94321MCA BIOS: HermitCrab Labs H3A.816M
Monitor: AOC Q2963Pm 29" WFHD 2560x1080 21:9
Interests: KDE on Apple Darwin, Keeping it real with the command line, Helping those that help themselves