I don’t really understand the extreme negativity.
I run 6 nodes on a 15yo laptop. I could run more, but I’d run out of disk space. It is very much commodity hardware.
We also don’t know what testing the team is doing with its partners. They are clearly uploading a lot of data and I suspect it’s in all shapes, sizes and much of it at the same time. Moreover, they’re likely validating it too with regular downloads.
I do understand that some in the community feel jilted though. Things are happening much more behind doors now and partners seem to be being wooed more than the community. It is a change, for sure.
However, the network does seem more stable then ever and resource usage has gone down and down for me. Devs seem to be working hard in the background to make the launch happen.
I’d like to see more openness, but I don’t see cause for panic.