I use my netbook to death with its like N280 (iirc) atom. All normal netbook tasks plus some older games like sc and d2, all runs great. At work I hook it up to a big monitor and actually do some multitasking, file sharing multiple ffox tabs, thunderbird emai, ect. Handles it all just fine. Plus the win7 aero UI.
So keep in mind when comparing something to an Atom, they are actually rather effective little chips. I get some slowdown when multitasking like that, they arent really designed to run 10+ apps simultaneously, but still it handles it very well! And older games also run without a hitch!