Almost all the ones I'm looking for now are 8 gigs! WTF Do you have to do to find a decent laptop for under a grand?!
The PC manufacturers con people with RAM because they bump prices up and advertise it as though it is this massive thing when it is often the cheapest and most insignificant part. You can buy 16GB of laptop memory for something like £40 depending on the quality/speed...
Ultimately people buy 16GB+ and never have any use for it. I would ignore the RAM specs and go for extra things like SSD's or dedicated graphics cards, they will boost performance infinitely more. If you need a laptop for Word or general use then there is no reason to spend anymore than £500 to be honest. If you are thinking of gaming or anything else then a desktop is miles cheaper and gives 1000x more performance.
I can't think of a single application that anyone would use a laptop for which would need 8GB or more, if there is then it would still probably run like an absolute pig.