There are some great articles out about setting up SharePoint 2010 to work on Windows 7.

Spence has a few great tips as always.

MSDN has a good post which actually gets you up and running.

One things that I found after getting SharePoint installed was a lack of access to some of the services – namely Services on Server and Add New on Web Applications.

After a bit of playing I found the solution.  The default installation adds the URL to the machine to the Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer. In order to get options to work correctly you need to add the URL for the local machine to the Local Intranet.

• Click tools Internet options
• Select the security tab
• Select Local Intranet and click sites
• Add the current machine URL site to the list
• Close the dialogs and the browser

Once added you will now see the options to manage services on server.