Hmm.........looking at the question posted by the poll starter, I would have to say dual core, or maybe in some cases even single core at the moment. Of course I'm looking at it from the average(and i mean reli average word using, bt downloading, dota-playing) joe's perspective. But multi-cores are the way to go for high end gaming, video encoding etc.

Wah joe_star how post the same entry 3 times! Single core is best for office use i think. U dun want ur employees using torrents or encoding dvds at work anyway!