System Requirements for Access 2003

Access 2003 is a very resource-intensive application, as are all other Office 2003 members, including InfoPath. You'll find execution of Access applications on Pentium PCs slower than 166MHz to be impaired, at best. A 300+ MHz Pentium II delivers acceptable performance, but a 667+ MHz Pentium III machine is a more realistic minimum.

Microsoft's somewhat optimistic minimum RAM recommendations for Office System 2003 running under Windows XP (SP1) or Windows 2000 Professional (SP3) is 64MB plus 8MB for each Office component running simultaneously. 128MB plus 16MB per component is a more realistic requirement.

The preceding recommendations don't take into account the RAM required to run SQL Server 2000. Double the realistic RAM recommendations to achieve acceptable performance with MSDE running. All the examples of this book were created and tested under Windows XP Professional (SP-1) or Windows Server running on a 667MHz Intel P-III computer with 384MB RAM.

Standard installation of Office 2003 without SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server Books Online requires 245MB of free disk space, of which 115MB must be on the system volume. Add another 100MB for SQL Server, and 50MB each for InfoPath and Windows SharePoint Services. From a practical standpoint, you need 500MB or more of free disk space to use Office 2003 effectively. Add another 200MB for the sample files on the accompanying CD-ROM.