I have an application to build that will accept records comming from the serial port and write them back to MS SQL Server 6.5

Here are the specs:
- Will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- The PC will be connected to the PBX directly via the serial port
- Is expected to receive 2.6 records/second on average
- 99% of the records will be received between 8:00 AM and midnight
- May have to do some formatting before writing it back to the server
- The application will run on the same server as MS SQL Server
- The server is a Pentium II 450MHz, with 64MB RAM and three 8 GB hard disk
- No other user/application will access this server, other than a reporting application run once a month

My biggest fear is that the application won't have time to treat a record before a new one show up in the serial port.

Now, for my questions:
- Is my fear justified?
- Wich development tool is better for this job: VB or VFP?
- Should I use the standard MSComm or is there a better ActiveX available?
- Should I try to write the record directly to the SQL Server or should I write it to a temporary file/table (low overhead) and treat that file/table in batch at night?

All suggestions are welcome.

TIA