Theres lots of posts with a similar mindset; help me do this because even though I have no idea what i'm doing, I still think it's the best option and no, I don't care for your opinions or have any regard for other components of my computer (since I only know "CPU").
Who exactly is quoting who?
As to the OP do whatever you want. Any CPU that you find will be less than mediocre by any recent standard. And by "recent standard", we're talking the last five years.
Early Emachines are notorious for blowing motherboards. If yours has survived to this point, consider yourself blessed.
I'm sure that this is a fine machine for surfing the net, or word processing, but that's about the extent of it.
That is my opinion, and you're full well welcome to keep searching for some ***** that will give you the answer you want to hear.
Read this, you can put CPUs, graphics cards, power supplies, bigger HDDs, or more memory into this box, and when you get done, it will still be walking a tightrope between your desktop and the flea market.
Oh, and in case you're still with me, I'm writing this post from an Emachines T-5026 with a Pentium-4, running @ 3.06 Ghz, which I won't put any effort or money into, because of its age. If I started thinking about "souping this thing up", the best thing that could be said about it would be this, "he's a nice man, it's a shame he's harboring those delusions of grandeur"! It is what it is, I love it, but I'm not intending to throw good money after bad on it.
Your computer needs to be maintained as is, partly because of its "value added" software. M$ "works is worth 30 bucks, and OEM software can't be transfered to another machine. If you want to spend money on your Emachine, treat it to a new power supply, and a good one, it's earned it.