SharePoint: 10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions :
This is an excellent article for Sharepoint Developers looking to start new project. This published document covers Sharepoint development environment to packaging solution and continuous build for Sharepoint solution using TFS and using WSPBuilder.
Before reading this I didn't knew that one can install WSS on my Vista box. Bamboo Solutions have provided this link which explains how to install WSS on Vista machine and you can continue development on your local machine rather fiddling around improving RAM for your VM.