As a 2500u laptop owner, I think I can give a pretty fair assessment on these APU's. I'll admit, when I first bought it, I was VERY unimpressed. However, enhanced driver stability and features (sharpening and scaling), coupled with now standard dual channel RAM and higher TDP's out of the box on many of these laptops, mean that performance is much better than it used to be and actually looks pretty good on a smaller screen. In addition to this, the recent node shrinks I'm sure mean it will be even better. I'll admit, that some things still arn't that great, like for emulation, but I'm crossing my fingers for even more features that enhance the experience in future Adrenalin editions.
One thing I did notice on a lot of recent games is that instead of running in slo-mo, it just switches to 30 Hz. So even if you arn't getting full speed, the effect of using less frames means that you often can't even see a difference in speed anyways.
General computing seems just fine. The one thing to be noted though is that installing things does seem to take a great deal of time on an external HDD. Updating graphics drivers and BIOS can also be a hassle and somewhat risky without taking necessary precautions.
Now, would I recommend this as a gaming PC? No. My desktop provides much better performance. However, if say you need a backup computer, you need something simple for school (that you can maybe even convince your parents you need for 'educational' purposes), or you're just on a tight budget, I'd say it's definitely a great buy, especially if you can get a good deal on it. (I paid $599 CAD. Regular was $799, meaning a savings of 25%).
There is a lot of fun to be had on one of these at a lower price point.