Hardware considerations for running Access

[Charlie]

I use Access a lot, often having several databases open at a time.
These are simple, "flat file" type databases, but large (100,000 KB to
600,000 KB).
I need a new computer, and was wondering what features I should try to
optimize in order to run Access faster (in particular, faster at
running queries on the data, not generating reports)? For example,
would more RAM be more useful than a faster hard drive? or should I
try for the fastest processor speed? Are there any guidelines on this?

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

 

[Wayne Morgan]

If you go with a fairly new machine (i.e. P4-2.4 GHz or faster) I would
worry about RAM first then the hard drive speed. I have yet to see any
database that doesn't love RAM, Access included.

 

[Allen Browne]

Access is not really very demanding of hardware.

For a well-designed and implemented database, you may not notice much
difference between a Celeron 1000 with 256MB RAM and a basic drive, compared
to a Pentium IV with 1GB+ of RAM and RAID-SCSI drives.

RAM and spare drive space are always useful. CPU is useful if have
compute-intensive calculations in your query, rather than merely waiting for
data reads/writes.

If you are doing lots of database development, consider a graphics card that
supports 2 monitors. It is very useful to be able to see the form you are
developing on one screen while you write the VBA event procedures on the
other. If the 2nd one can be rotated into portrait, you can see an entire
letter page of code at once, and likewise an entire page in Word when you
come to write the documentation.

If you still use Access 97, it will run your CPU at 100% usage, so make sure
you have adequate cooling. We had one machine that would lock up after
several hours devloping in A97 (but not later versions). Adding a system fan
completely solved the issue.