IDK... just shooting from the hip on this really. Guess the initial numbers were a little off compared to the average after 6 hours.
With an avg. system load of 5.XX while having several tabs open in the browser (plus running top and gkrellm, etc.), I can see a dedicated pos like my lappy pulling it off. Though crunching on through the timing errors and forced disconnections by 'peers', still managed to sync a little over 6 GB of the 40'ish GB reportedly needed in 6 hours.
Ctrl+C'ed it though in search of those alternatives we talked about earlier (just let it run the 6 hours for shits n giggles).
According to
https://github.com/steemit/steem#dockerized-p2p-node
a half-way decent older lappy should at least be able to pull of the sync using the p2p Node pre-built Docker option. And at the avg rate of 1 GB per hour should take less than 2 days to completely sync.
Yet I digest, I am sure my ignorance is showing (not a bad thing if I learn something through it). Prbly no happy ending anyway as p2p (from what I understand) can only read the info relating to the blockchain, I don't think I can interact with it beyond that (no creating the account).

Quickstart
Just want to get up and running quickly? Try deploying a prebuilt dockerized container. Both common binary types are included.
Dockerized p2p Node
To run a p2p node (ca. 2GB of memory is required at the moment):

docker run
-d -p 2001:2001 -p 8090:8090 --name steemd-default
steemit/steem

docker logs -f steemd-default # follow along

Dockerized Full Node
To run a node with all the data (e.g. for supporting a content website) that uses ca. 14GB of memory and growing:

docker run
--env USE_WAY_TOO_MUCH_RAM=1 --env USE_FULL_WEB_NODE=1
-d -p 2001:2001 -p 8090:8090 --name steemd-full
steemit/steem

docker logs -f steemd-full