Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta
Since SharePoint 2010 has been made available for MSDN/TechNet subscriber now, here’re some steps you would like to follow to get a successful installation. But keep in mind: This beta is not supported and you CANNOT upgrade the installation to RTM when it’s released. This Beta should only be used for evaluation purpose.
http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx

Single Server Complete Install of SharePoint 2010 using local accounts
Something that was possible in SharePoint Server 2007 has become tricky in SharePoint Server 2010. The complete installation on a single server using non-domain accounts. Something most developers, demonstrators and testers do a lot of suddenly requires the use of domain accounts instead of local machine accounts.
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites Download Links
All SharePoint 2010 pre-requisites download links with explanation using screendumps.
http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/10/25/sharepoint-2010-pre-requisites-download-links.aspx

SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity test results and recommendations
These white papers describe the performance and capacity impact of specific feature sets included in SharePoint Server 2010. These white papers include information about the performance and capacity characteristics of the feature and how it was tested by Microsoft, including: Test farm characteristics

  • Test results
  • Recommendations
  • Troubleshooting performance and scalability

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fd1eac86-ad47-4865-9378-80040d08ac55&displaylang=en