I am a MOSS developer. Based on what I read so far about SharePoint 2010, I probably have to look around for another development workstation - 64 Bit with some beefy RAM, and most importantly to figure out which version of OS to install (Windows 2K8 R2, or Windows 7 Ultimate).
I need some feedbacks from others who have gone before me with hand-on experiences in setting up their workstations for this purpose. I welcome any suggestion on the realistic "baseline" on hardware/software requirements.
SharePoint 2010 runs quite well on Windows 7. There are some manual steps in the installation, but they're well documented. So it's mostly a question of which OS you personally want to run.
I'm not sure yet what to make of the memory requirements. The recommendation for developer machines is 4 GB, and I'm running with 6 GB, without problems.
From my personal experience, running with 4GB of RAM on Windows 7 is definitely a bare minimum. You're going to want at least 6, and ideally 8GB.
On another note, Windows 7 Ultimate isn't required; just Windows 7 Professional or better.
My experience has been that 4GB of RAM just isn't enough. We are currently using 6GB with decent performance, but 8GB has been recommended to us. We are also using Windows Server 2008 R2.
If you use SQL, you will need to install CU5 as well.
Another thing you might want to think about, and I'd like to hear from others if they have any experience... is that your memory requirements may be less if you configure the minimum amount of service applications necessary for what you are doing.
We have a Virtual Machine created and we are using that on a 4GB RAM Windows 7 64 bit machine using the Sun Virtual Box. It seems ok for us and so far no probs. It is a good choice to give 3GB RAM dedicated to the Virtual Machine(Win 2K8/2K8 R2)
-Thanks, Codename "Santosh"