will all windows 7 versions be suitable for a development machine?

So windows premium/standard/ultimate, are these versions all ok fo开发者_Go百科r a development computer?

ie. do any prevent installations of things like sql server, vs.net,etc?

You can use any version except Starter, and everything will work fine.

Standard does not allow for joining a domain, so any Windows Authentication you need to do from a domain controller wouldn't work. EDIT: *removed for accuracy :)

Starter has some pretty tough limitations, wouldn't go there.

See here for a comparison between the versions, you should be fine with these 3 versions unless you need to join a domain

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/default.aspx

More details in a question I asked similar to this here: Visual Studio 2008/2010 & SQL Server 2008 on Windows 7 Home Premium