All in all, the new and improved Pentium E6300 can make a great choice. It has everything a budget processor should have. It has good performance in almost every benchmark, not great but still good for a budget CPU. It has extremely low power draw, both in load and idle states, it's easy to keep at cool temperatures and even the stock cooling can run very silent. Intel even added the virtualization technology so small companies can enjoy XP mode on Windows 7 if needed.
For budget overclockers or those who seek passive HTPC components this little fellow is a great choice. Performance gains with overclocked settings are really great, and in most cases it can offer the performance of budget quad core models while keeping the power consumption within reasonable limits.
But in the end, it all comes down to its pricing, and with Pentium E6300 Intel completely missed the spot. Pentium E6300 is being directly priced against Athlon II X3 425, which has much better performance in almost every benchmark, and it’s a few bucks cheaper too. Pentium E6300 is also about $20 more expensive than Athlon II X2 240 and in most cases it cannot justify the price difference with just performance.
Considering the total platform costs, especially with recent DDR2/DDR3 memory price gap despairing, you would be better off with AMD's AM3 platform, accompanied by an Athlon II processor if you're looking for a budget system that can serve as HTPC, gaming and every day usage computer. Pentium E6300 is just a time killer until the real deal 32 nm Westmere cores arrives next month.