Windows 7 as a Java, Tomcat, Postgres developer

I've been given a new computer at work on the (ANU campus) just yesterday and it came preinstalled with the new Windows 7. I've been told I am probably the first person at the college to be using Windows 7 so I almost felt like a guinea pig and seeing if it has any compatibility issues especially for my development environment. But after spending some time on it, I can tell you it really wasn't that painful to make the transition.

Java 6

Since I was running a 64 bit machine I needed to download the Windows x64 option when loading from the sun webite:

Download Java 6

Eclipse

Since I was running the 64bit version of Java, I needed to download the 64bit version of eclipse for Windows. I had downloaded version 3.5.1

Eclipse Download page

The direct download for the 64 bit version on windows is here
Direct eclipse download 64bit Windows

The eclipse that was downloaded was not the Java EE bundle. So it was missing a lot of the functionality that I was used to such as HTML editors, JSP editors etc.... To download the plugins for that kind of support,
In Eclipse goto: Help - Install new software
and supply the following URL: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo
Then select the "Web, XML and Java EE Development" package.
Now eclipse is ready to go.

Postgres

Initially I attempted to install the latest Postgres binary Version 8.4 for windows and it immediately came back with an installation error. I followed up on some forums and many others had encountered similar issues. I was told that people had better luck with version 8.3 which I downloaded from here:

Download postgres 8.3

In the default installation I still encountered some errors. In this case, it complained something about a 'Secondary Logon service'. To enable this service I did the following:

I went to the 'Services' windows doing the following: Start - Control Panel - System and Security - Administrative tools - Services

In the services window, search for the 'Secondary Logon service' and enable it.

 I also disabled User Access control (UAC) which seemed to cause problems for other people by following the steps outlined here

Once the above steps were completed I was able to continue with the normal installation procedure for Postgres 8.3.