More cores are indeed better, because while very few programs are coded to take advantage of multiple cores, most users these days run multiple applications simultaneously. At present, I have 10 browser tabs open (thats one application) , an anti-virus program, a video encoding program converting avi to divx, two notepads and I dont know what else!

The OS will run each of these in a different core. So there is a huge benefit.

Even in the days of single-core computers people were running multiple applications simultaneously, thanks to the Windows Multitasking Feature. People who have made the shift to dual core can notice the huge difference in speeds.

Plus video encoding programs handle problems which naturally lend themselves to parallel processing, so I am sure that application alone runs on two threads.

And the GPU's which the author talks about also have multiple cores to handle the naturally parallely solvable graphics calculations