Portal 2 system requirements question

I'm dead keen to play Portal 2, but the box says my processor needs to be at least 3 GHz. My laptop's got better stats than necessary in every other respect (RAM, graphics, etc), and it handles the earlier Source engine games just fine, but my processor's just a little slow at 2.13 GHz.

What I'm wondering is, would it be possible for me to play Portal 2 safely and effectively? Would it work as long as I turned down the various graphical options to their lowest-quality settings? And what would be the potenial bad side-effects of playing a game that's forever pushing my processor just a little too far?

I'd be really grateful for guidance from folks who've got first-hand technical knowledge of this kind of thing.

In case it matters, my processor's an "Intel Core i3 processor 330M (2.13Ghz, 3MB L3 cache)" according to the label on the laptop case.

It'd be very cool if there's some way I can coax this beastie into coping with the coolness of Portal 2 somehow. Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer advice on whether or not this is acutally possible :)

Turns out it works fine. With the video options turned down, there's virtually no noticeable mouse lag or other ill-effects. Whoo!

Good, now quickly finish it so I can have someone to play co-op with.

I'm not sure how system requirements work these days, but I'd guess that the 3 GHz requirement is based on a single core processor, while your processor is dual core (which is basically to a single core processor what a two lane road is to a one lane road). I'd say your processor will be just fine!