One thing people forget though is, if you get a 960T or similar, thats almost the end of the line. With the i3, it still performs as well now, plus you can upgrade right through to i7 and ivybridge, so the future upgradability is massively better.
i used to like AMD until i used an AMD Sempron
Corrected your spelling there.
Anyway, Sempron's aren't bad. They're like the Celeron, but just like the recent generation, they've gotten a lot better than they used to be.
I know Intel is reliable, but I stay away from Celerons. They just have a bad reputation. Doesn't Intel have its own bad CPUs? Or AMD has more?
My first computer was a beast.......75mhz Pentium