At the moment, yes, but a couple of years ago people would have said the same about 2GB, and now some games only run at their best when given this amount and many people have 2GB of ram in their computers.

Some applications can already benefit from 4GB+ of ram, such as 3D and video post production applications. But other than future games and applications that need a lot of ram for processing large volumes of data, I agree that most other applications shouldn't ever need so much ram though. If Microsoft Office ever has such a requirement something would seriously be wrong with its coders.

Although one other element is now a factor too. Multicore processors. The more cores you have running in a computer, the more ram you need so that each processor has enough of its own to get on with its processes without needing to wait for the others to free it up. Having 2GB in a 4 core system would only give each core an equal split if 512MB when all 4 are running at full speed processing different information. Obviously some processes would use more or less than this but it's just an example. So sticking 4GB in the same system would allow each to have 1GB all at the same time.