A good understanding of Java is the only prerequisite for reading Getting started with Spring Framework book. We intentionally left out Spring Web MVC, Spring Security, and so on, modules of Spring so that it is easy for a beginner to read this book. All the example applications that accompany this book are standalone applications, so it is easy to understand and run them.
Thanks for the reply. I think you have answered my next question already, but here it goes anyway.
What type of hardware does one need for the examples in the book?