Now the question arises if one should use Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 for development? I would suggest Windows Server 2008 instead of Windows 7 for developer machine OS because of the following reasons:

If you’re dealing with people who are new to SharePoint and finding it hard to explain what it is, this video might be a savior. It also great to include in a client pitch where at times most of the business folks have no clue about SharePoint.

You need to have the latest version of Silverlight to view this video or you can choose to view it in WMV format.

SharePoint in Plain English

Next version of SharePoint will be 64-bit only is a good enough reason to use a 64-bit operating system (Windows Server 2008) for all new installation. If you plan for and implement 64-bit MOSS now, it may make your upgrade path in the future a little easier.

The 64-bit systems offer direct access to more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems and process more data per clock cycle, enabling more scalable, higher performing computing solutions.

The /3GB switch is not recommended for SharePoint Server running on 32-bit OS. Microsoft recommends against using the /3 GB switch because most SharePoint site traffic involves sending large amounts of data through the operating system. Therefore, leaving only 1 GB of address space for the operating system can destabilize the computer.

Additional Reads:

"64-Bit Gotchas" by John Powell states couple of important things you need to be aware of when choosing between 32-bit and 64-bit MOSS environments.

Check out the "Benefits of 64-bit Windows" whitepaper from Microsoft to know more advantages of using 64-bits Servers. 

Avoid mixing 32-bit and 64-bit servers

One should avoid to mix to 32-bit and 64-bit servers until you have any significant reason to do so. You can still mix and match 32 and 64 bit servers, but you must keep the same architecture at each tier of the farm.  For example all front end (WFE) SharePoint servers must be either 32-bit or 64-bit.  All index/search servers must be one or the other.  All database servers (if you have more than 1 in a cluster for example) must be either 32-bit or 64-bit.  But at each tier you can change architecture. For example you could have 2 front ends at 64-bit, 2 search index servers at 32-bit, and 2 database servers 32-bit.  As long as each tier is the same architecture.

Mixing 32-bit and 64-bit servers can affect load balancing. However, there is a risk that the 32-bit servers might become overloaded if the network load balancer is configured to use a less-intelligent model such as round robin.

Additionally, deploying both 32-bit and 64-bit servers increases the maintenance overhead for the farm. This is because third-party applications, custom solutions, patches, and software updates for both architectures must be tracked and managed independently.

Limit the size of content database

Microsoft recommends that content database size should not be more than 100 GB to achieve optimal performance. In case your design requires a database larger than 100 GB, you should split content from a site collection that is approaching 100 GB into a new site collection in a separate content database to avoid performance or manageability issues.

Put SQL Server 2005 on a dedicated server

As a best practice use install SQL Server 2005 on a dedicated server that is not running any other farm roles, unless you are deploying your system on a stand-alone server. You should use 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005 on a 64-bit operating system, unless you have a significant business reason not to.

Turn Off the features you don’t need

SharePoint offers many features but you don’t necessary need all for your application. Resources will be more efficiently used if you only turn on the features relevant to your application.

As with any software, some features take up more resources than others. Especially the features that rely on the Microsoft SharePoint Timer service, such as alerts and usage analysis log processing, can have more of an impact on your server performance than other features. Different features can affect server resources for different reasons, but usually performance is impacted when a feature must be run on demand when a user performs a particular action.

Use Kerberos authentication

NTLM and Kerberos are the two popular authentication mechanisms for SharePoint.

NTLM Authentication is the well-known and uses challenge-response for authentication. NTLM is easy and does not require any special configuration. As Microsoft likes to say, “It just works.”

Kerberos, on the other hand, is a more complex ticket-based authentication mechanism that authenticates the client to the server and authenticates the server to the client. While Kerberos is more secure with several other advantages though it can be a bit challenging to configure it properly.

Microsoft recommends using Kerberos authentication for farms with heavy usage as it can return authentication request results quickly. Kerberos caches information about the client after authentication and therefore it requires fewer round trips to the domain controllers in comparison to NTLM. Once a client gets a service ticket for a service from the Key Distribution Center (KDC -Domain controller on a windows network) it can reuse that ticket to authenticate with the service without having to go back to the domain controller for a new ticket. NTLM requires trips to the domain controller on every authentication request. This means that it can perform better than NTLM particularly in large farm environments.

Additional Reads:

SharePoint Joel blog post on Kerberos authentication

Configure Kerberos authentication (Office SharePoint Server) on TechNet

Check out these cool videos to for more details about SharePoint 2010:

2010 Sneak Peek Overview Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Overview-Video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek IT Pro Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/IT-Pro-video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek Developer Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Developer-video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek Get Ready: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Get_Ready.aspx

Here some key updates coming out of the technical preview:

• Office 2007 ribbon coming to SharePoint
• Better and more organised user interface
• Silverlight Web Part
• Extended support for browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari on Windows
• Business Connectivity Services (the evolution of the Business Data Catalog)
• Enhanced version of Groove dubbed as ‘SharePoint Workspace’
• Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Tools
• Language Integrated (LINQ) for SharePoint

Check KB article (971620) for more details. However the links to the download page mentioned in the article are not working and resulting in standard error page.

Thanks to Stephen Gossner for providing download location of the hotfix EXE files.

Download locations:

32-bit version:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

64-bit version:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

Enjoy!

Here is the download link on Microsoft for SharePoint Designer 2007.

Its quite a tedious job to set up default pages manually when you have more than 10 site/subsites. Its pretty easy to do it programmatically. Here is how:

public static void SetDefaultPage(SPWeb web, string pageName)
{
    if (PublishingWeb.IsPublishingWeb(web))
    {
    PublishingWeb publishingWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web); 

    //Get the file name
    SPFile welcomeFile = web.GetFile(pageName);
    //Assign the new filename to the DefaultPage property
    publishingWeb.DefaultPage = welcomeFile; 

    //Update the Publishing Web.
    publishingWeb.Update();
    }
} 

Remember to pass the full relative path to the pageName. For example, pageName should be "/Subsite/Pages/MyNewWelcome.aspx" if your welcome page resides in a Page library of the subsite.

Below is the PurgeList method from Keith Richie which does an excellent job of Purging items in a list. Here is a CodePlex tool and  one more solution to deal with the same problem.

/// <summary>
/// Purges items and folders from a list
/// Define WSSV3 to remove list folders
/// </summary>
/// The SPList you want to
/// purge items from
private static void PurgeList(SPList list)
{
Console.WriteLine("Purging list: " + list.Title);
Console.WriteLine("Base Type: " + list.BaseType.ToString());

// ===========================================================
// list.ItemCount returns a count that includes all items
// "AND" folders.
// You can't use list.Items.DeleteItemById() to remove a
// folder
// ===========================================================
System.Collections.Hashtable hItems =
new System.Collections.Hashtable(list.ItemCount);

// ===========================================================
// SPList.Items returns all list items in the entire list
// regardless of folder containment
// Note, just because list.ItemCount includes folders,
// list.Items does not.
// ===========================================================
foreach (SPListItem item in list.Items)
hItems.Add(item.ID,null);

// Remove the list items
foreach (int ID in hItems.Keys)
list.Items.DeleteItemById(ID);
// Clear the hashtable
hItems.Clear();
// ===========================================================
// SPList.Folders returns all folder items in the entire list
// regardless of parent folder containment
// ===========================================================
foreach (SPListItem item in list.Folders)
hItems.Add(item.ID,null);

// Remove the folder items
foreach (int ID in hItems.Keys)
{
list.Folders.DeleteItemById(ID);
}
}

However now there is a workaround to get IntelliSense for CAML by linking it to the right XSD file. Even better John Holliday recently released a free tool CAML.NET to solve this problem and provides additional features.

Option 1: Fix IntelliSense by creating a reference to wss.xsd

This solution will load the XSD whenever a new XML file referencing it is opened.

Open the Catalog.xml file from the VS.NET installation folder. If you are using VS.NET 2008 Catalog.xml will be available in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas.

To create a new reference to wss.xsd, copy and paste the code below:

<Schema href="C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/TEMPLATE/XML/wss.xsd"

targetNamespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" />

Restart your Visual Studio.NET instance and and you will have IntelliSense available when working with CAML files.

Option 2: Install John Holliday’s CAML.NET IntelliSense tool

I am using this tool from last 3 weeks and finding it very useful when editing CAML files. It provide more extensive IntelliSense than you get with reference the wss.xsd(Option 1).

CAML.NET IntelliSense tool extend the core schemas in two ways:

• Gather as much information as possible about each element and attribute and place it into xs:annotation elements so that it pops up in context while editing; and
• Identify and replace as many xs:string types as possible with enumerated types so the valid values for each attribute also popup in context while editing.

CAML.NET IntelliSense download package includes an MSI installer that copies the extended schemas into the local Visual Studio schema cache, so all you have to do is run the installer and then close and re-open Visual Studio.  The current version handles both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.

The field reference in content type are managed through SPFieldLink object.

Add field reference from Content Type:

public static void AddFieldRefToContentType(SPContentType contentType, SPField field)
{
    //Check if the Field reference does not exists already 
    if (!contentType.Fields.ContainsField(field.Title))
    {
         contentType.FieldLinks.Add(new SPFieldLink(field));
         contentType.Update();
    }
    else
    {
         //Do Nothing
    }
}

Delete field reference from Content Type:

public static void DeleteFieldRefFromContentType(SPContentType contentType, SPField field)
{
    //Check if the Field reference exists
    if (contentType.Fields.ContainsField(field.Title))
    {
         contentType.FieldLinks.Delete(field.Title);
         contentType.Update();
    }
    else
    {
         //Do Nothing
    }
}

Check MSDN information for more details on Field and Field References.