A friend of mine was mentioning this to me the other day (he is not a fan of the prequels), saying that something that he thought was missing was the "cool" or signature vehicles that we see in the OT. In a way, I can sort of see that as well. It may just be nostalgia or an OT preference, but I would think the majority of the "general population" would be familiar enough with the Falcon, TIE Fighters, X-Wings, Speeder Bikes, and possibly the AT-AT to recognize them by name. There are others that are possible (Slave 1, AT-ST, Landspeeder) as well, although the names might not come to mind for those who aren't as familiar with the movies.
If you look at the PT, I don't know if you could say that. You've got a ton of non-hardcore fans that saw those movies as well, but I wonder - outside of maybe "Jedi Starfighters" or podracers - if any of the vehicles could be recognized by name at all. Not that there aren't some cool things (AT-TE, Juggernaught, etc.), but aside from the big podracer focus of Episode I, and possibly the Jedi starfighters in AOTC/ROTS, I wonder if much would be known to the general population - at least when compared to the Original Trilogy.