lol I have helped picked out 3 laptops for people in the past 6 months. And most didnt understand what ram was. Surprisingly majority of people 30 and older think speed has to do with hard drive space. And anymore with applications I wouldn't go no less then a Dual core processor but i dont expect many people to under stand terms of a processor. But i do believe people try to make everything more personalized now, everything from cars, phones,mp3 players and PCs.
And why look for HDD and RAM? Those are the easiest to upgrade or replace.