Correct Hardware Requirment for Educational Purpose

Question

Goal:
Buy a new hardware for SharePoint development.
Purpose:
Increase my knowledgein SharePoint development. Today. I'm a junior SharePoint developer. I have experience in dot.net deveopment but not in SharePoint development.
Problem:
1.
Is Hardware requirements—database requirement below enough?
2.
Which software requirements I should use?
 - Single server with built-in database,
 - Server farm with a single server in the farm or
 - Server farm with multiple servers in the farm
for a educational purpose. Each of these has different hardware requirement. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx)
Information:
I have consider buying a new desktop och laptop computer with following criteria.
laptop with hardware requirement:
16 GB RAM
Intel processor i7
Desktop with hardware:
24 GB RAM
Intel processor i7
I gonna install windows 2012, SQL server 2012, SharePoint 2013 in VM Player's environment.

Answer 1

For development purposes, if you leave out SharePoint Search, you can get away with as little as 10GB RAM allocated to the SharePoint + SQL VM (given you restrict SQL to 1 or 2GB memory).
If you need Search functional, then go no lower than 16GB for a SharePoint + SQL VM.
Also make sure you get a separate disk for the SharePoint + SQL VM, SSD if you can swing it, otherwise, in a laptop, a 7200 RPM drive minimum.
Don't forget that you also need a Domain Controller in your environment running Active Directory. This should not be the same VM as the SharePoint server, but rather a separate VM (for many reasons). This VM can be small, with as little as 512MB RAM allocated
to it.
Trevor Seward
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This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.