These days, it seems that any cryptocurrency with enough adoption to have value, also has enough adoption for the miners on the network to completely overpower a low-end CPU.

So I suppose the real question is, what is your goal in mining?

If your goal is to help secure the network, I suppose you can just rest easy, knowing it's in very capable hands.

If your goal is to have some coins to play around with, perhaps getting coins from faucets (sites that give out a small number of BTC to new users) would be a better approach.

If your goal is to get coins, and faucet coins aren't enough for you... unfortunately, as a result of BTC being worth something, you need to give up something of value to get them. Whether that means buying them on an exchange, or purchasing video cards whose hash power can keep up with the network, or selling things of value to other users and taking payment in coins.

No free lunches under the sun.