Hello joncris,
You will prefer mining with a GPU as they are more efficient than CPUs. If you want some mining hardware comparison between some GPUs and CPUs, here's a useful link for you:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison.
So, to answer your questions 1. Yes, you should be able to mine with it; 2. Yes you can mine using your CPU. If you want some explanations, go check this link:
https://www.weusecoins.com/en/getting-started.
To summarize the "how-to", you need a "wallet" (so you can stock your coins), a miner, and a pool to work in.
Wallet: You can have a wallet software based (your easiest and best choice; I would recommend Armory) where you can track your coins from your local computer. Note: the coins technically aren't in your computer (here's an explanation of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE), you need an active Internet connection, each time you close the software, it needs to re-sync with the network which takes more than 30 minutes, and the blockchain actually takes more than 30GB of hard drive space.
Miner: The software you can use differs from the GPU you have, but if you want to mine with your CPU, here's one that will do the job (CPUminer):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpuminer/. Although, you might want to have a look at the "Mining Hardware Comparison" page I linked before as it shows the "best" miner for the specific hardware in use and the commands inputted for it. Of course, to find other possibilities, Google is your friend.
Pool: So you can make some money, you need to join a pool where you will be payed (for example) by the amount of shares you submitted. Except if you have some awesome mining hardware under your hand, the chances for you to find a block on your own is so low that it will take you years to MAYBE find one (the computer will become obsolete quick enough). So this is why you need to join a pool where your computer will be working with other people's computer, and the block's reward will be shared to everyone, depending on the amount of shares each one submitted. To search the best pool for you, here's a link comparing the different pools:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools. If you still wonder where you should start, I heard Slush's pool is a nice pool to start with.
I hope it helped, don't hesitate if you have more questions!
Sincerely,
Samwell9854
