What will you do? fullscreen in your VM?

* Editors

Notepad++ (free) or sublime (commercial, but worth it) If you need VI, use winvi it can even hexedit.

All three can detect DOS/UNIX linebreaks and handle them.

* Figure out Versions

I use Meld or Windiff to see diffs. Use tortoisesvn for version control.

* Virtualbox

Using Virtualbox? You can share your development directory, and run code both in Unix as Windows (for cross testing). This way you can also use editors on the Linux side.

If using Virtualbox, consider adding an extra virtual network adapter in BRIDGED modus, so you can always access the box.

If you like, develop on Linux, then when you need to run it in windows, touch a file which will be checked by a PowerShell script, and run your Perl, or restart a service... and thus receive the output back in Linux...

* The typical Windows Caveats

Do not use backticks, use libraries to do things. Lots of libraries will not works nicely (depending on what you need to do).

* Windows version

As for the windows version: Develop where you want it to run. All basic perly stuff will work from Windows XP and up (if you do not need much integration, like working around the windows security model because you run as Administrator... XP is pretty light), however, some stuff like WMI has changed over the years, and you will need maybe even a Windows Server edition to work on. (sometimes, even patches matter)