I thought i would chip in with my two pence worth.

You have been given some good advice on this thread, but i would just re-iterate this.

Access is a terrible database, and yes i know that with good design you can get it to work perfectly well for a fairly small user base, but that's not the point, its terrible over a network and it slows down your other network traffic as well as your system.

Also when you can get a completely free version of SQL EXPRESS 2005 why would you use it any more ?

You big problem DataEmpress is that if you move your back end to SQL Server & leave you front end in Access although this is perfectly do-able i think you would be disappointed in the speed improvements you would get.

Linked tables are not great, trust me i have had the pleasure of looking after a system where they had done just this (move the back end to SQL Server while keeping the front end in Access) and it is just not a great solution, it works but it's not great.

The best solution would obviously to have your database as SQL Server Express & then move your front end to a .Net application, however i understand that might be difficult for you to accomplish.

It might be simpler in the short term to get your "data entry people" to use wired connections. Have you tested if there is any difference in speed if you plug one of the laptops into the network against wireless ?