I was able to get a windows miner up and running today. It's a band new intel I7 with 8 cores. It's been running at a has rate of 40812 hps for several hours on all eight cores. It has found nothing. The mining software for some reason shows estimate time to produce a single steem power at 876 minutes. The problem is it goes down to the four hundreds and then it goes back up. If it is going to lie to me why even have it in the first place? The queue position is also a lie. your 107 in the queue no your 108, no wait your 107. Did these developers even know what a queue is? Anyway long story short mining is taking longer than writing by a long shot. To think people got paid hundred, maybe thousands to tell people how to mine is simply ridiculous. Mining isn't remotely worth the energy expense. I am guessing the curiosity about mining is worth more than the mining itself. So many things in this world are a scam. Mining steem looks like another one.
I looked into it as well and in order to make any sort of money mining, you need to have a lot of power. A single i7 processor is a drop in the bucket and probably won't get you very far.
I have two I7 CPU's and I don't think I would get any ware with them.
You guys should go read up on the dude who tried to mine bitcoin two years back. He brought an entire building and motified it to just farm bitcoins.....